


Ready Aim Fire

by KingJackson10101010



Category: Assassination Classroom, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Abused Shiota Nagisa, Akabane Karma is a Good Friend, Akabane Karma is a Little Shit, Assassin Shiota Nagisa, Assassination, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Child Abuse, Crossover, Cute Midoriya Izuku, Cute Shiota Nagisa, Deku is also best boi change my mind, Found Family, Gay Akabane Karma, Heavy Subtext, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealous Bakugou Katsuki, Karmagisa Week, Midoriya Izuku Needs A Hug, Midoriya Izuku is a Dork, Minor Akabane Karma/Shiota Nagisa, Nagisa is best boi change my mind, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Akabane Karma, Sassy Shiota Nagisa, Shiota Nagisa Needs a Hug, Shiota Nagisa is a savage, Shiota Nagisa-centric, Some angst, Todoroki Shouto is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingJackson10101010/pseuds/KingJackson10101010
Summary: Being born quirkless was supposed to be a mark on his fate, but ever since Class 3-E, Nagisa found a way to utilize his talents in ways he never thought before. Including one that he’d never known existed.Now he’s a professional being offered jobs daily. In his short career, he’s managed to dozens per day, never failing.His new job has nothing to do with killing. He’s to act as a private eye by going to UA Academy, and keep a close eye on the newest generation of heroes. But first he has to prove he belongs.Assassin or hero. Killer or protector. What kind of future does he want to choose?
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Shiota Nagisa, Midoriya Izuku & Shiota Nagisa, Todoroki Shoto & Midoriya Izuku, Todoroki Shoto and Shiota Nagisa, Yaoyorozu Momo & Shiota Nagisa
Comments: 54
Kudos: 289





	1. Natural Law of Survival

**Author's Note:**

> You close your eyes and the glory fades.

His whole life had kind of been one big training session.

As a kid, having a waifish build and girly looks was bad enough, but Nagisa also happened to be quirkless.

And so, he was a bully magnet. Thugs from the nearby middle school would cut him off on his way home, and beat him into the dirt. Of course, it was never severe enough to tell a teacher, who only cared enough if Nagisa showed up with broken bones or something. Bruises and cuts were nothing new, every single day. In class, it was mostly elementary school bullying. Kids would throw him side comments whenever he was called up to read. The girls would talk behind his back, the boys would throw their crap at him. Occasionally his stuff would get stolen, or graffiti would be left on his desk.

So naturally, he took counter measures. He’d map out routes to avoid the middle schoolers, using a variety of shortcuts that a third grader _probably_ shouldn’t know about. Dark alleyways, rooftops, and even sometimes he’d crawl into the sewers if he was desperate enough. Disgusting, he was aware, but that’s beside the point. He’d do the same thing for his own school too, coming and going to certain places at certain times of day, avoiding those who took advantage of the fact that he was small and weak. Not to mention he started arriving far earlier than the other kids so no one would get the chance to graffiti his desk. He realized that the kids only stole things they could get away with stealing; a pen or pencil, some pages from his notebook, the crayon he was using, et cetera. The solution was to just bring extras, like a pack of pencils, a spare pen, a box of crayons, you get the idea. Which is how, at the age of eight years old, reconnaissance became a very natural part of his daily routine.

Occasionally he’d get held up no matter what he did to avoid the tormentors. But being so tiny had its perks, surprisingly enough. It meant it wasn’t hard slipping out of sticky situations. He was fast, not enough to stand out from the crowd during gym, but enough that he could run when he needed to. He could dodge, too, and so it wasn’t very long before his reflexes developed into something actually respectable, believe it or not.

Of course, the injuries happened regardless. Not because of the thugs, but because of his _beloved_ mother.

His mother, to put it simply, was a little sick in the head. Maybe that’s a bit rude, but regardless, the doctors called it bipolarism. Later on in life he would end up learning that most people with that kind of disorder often lived normal lives with the help of therapy and medication, something his mother was too stubborn for. At the time, however, he didn’t understand what it meant, just that it was an ugly word that his mother didn’t like. A word that meant hurt.

Hurt when his mother found out that he would not develop a quirk. Hurt when she cried in her room for hours. Hurt when she called him a burden, a disappointment, as if he had chosen to be a weakling. Hurt when she slapped him hard across the face, tears in her eyes, and damn did she pack a punch. She hadn’t wanted a boy. She wanted an obedient daughter, a cute little girl that she could dress up in frilly pink dresses and make into her doll, and the fact that he was quirkless on top of that made it even worse.

Not that having a son _stopped_ her in any way, because why would it?

And while finding out that he was quirkless was a huge letdown for her, at the same time it seemed to be a blessing in disguise, because it meant he had no way of fighting back. He didn’t fight back when she stuffed him in cutesy and bright pastels like bubblegum pink and peachy yellow and even periwinkle blue. 

Sometimes, she’d change the color of the clothes he actually wanted to wear, inky blacks and darker, more robust greens and blues becoming sickly whites and aquamarines. That was his mother’s quirk, Chromokinesis. A slightly weaker form of lumokinesis that gave her the ability to change and manipulate colors. She’s somewhat capable of camouflage, and can alter someone’s mood, since colors have an affect on a person’s state of mind. Most typically, she used her power to push Nagisa into a state of submissiveness, via bombarding his vision with dark colors mixed in with bolder, harsher ones. It did the trick, always invoking fear and making him feel sick, like he’d just experienced the world’s most intense LSD trip.

(Not that he knew what an _actual_ LSD trip felt like, but he assumed it was something very similar.)

But to be honest, she didn’t really need to, since it’s not like he had the willpower to fight back, but it took away his desire to. Well, obviously he’d _wanted_ to fight it. At first anyways. But as the years went by, he learned that she only did this because she was tired and scared, that he didn’t have the right to protest because she was his mother, he had to do whatever she told him to do, and he accepted it quietly because he just couldn’t bring himself to deny his poor, sick mother. She needed him, she wanted him to be successful in life, and if he had to dress up like a girl and endure her yelling fits and sometimes get slapped or punched or kicked or strangled to near unconsciousness in order to keep her sane and happy, then so be it. He loves her, and she loves him. She loves him.

She has to.

So, his pain tolerance was higher than most, to say the least. The scars on his back he explained to others as being from a childhood accident, and most of the others that were on his arms and legs were too faint to notice. Mother knew how to treat wounds so that they wouldn’t infect or scar up too badly afterwards, and good thing too, or that’d be a fresh walk through hell. Though sometimes he’d be forced to patch up himself, which he could do just _fine,_ thank you very much, since he watched her do it herself.

And that was another thing he could do. Observe and learn. It was because his mother never even bothered to teach him the things he wanted to learn, so he taught himself.

He was good at it, too. Certain hobbies and skills he picked up simply by watching and through some intensive trial and error. Once he decided to learn how to stitch up his ruined clothes (they had been torn off his body by Mother, and then subsequently replaced by fluffy dresses, what joy), and he did this by watching her do it herself. She didn’t say anything when he peered over her shoulder and stared at her patching up a hole in a blanket, and he tried it himself around midnight, long after he ought to have been sleeping. The result was dozens of tiny holes in his fingers where he had repeatedly pierced his hands, and a stream of swear words that he was very aware he shouldn’t be saying, but it would come in handy when his mother gave him a cut so deep, he ended up stitching up the wound himself. It hurt like a bitch, as one could imagine.

And it was like that for many other things, too. He learned some basic self defense maneuvers at age ten, ones where even someone as pathetically puny as him could bring someone down. He had climbed up a fire escape and watched a class of young girls and women being taught hand to hand. He took a video with a cam recorder and mimicked their movements. It was a sloppy imitation, but it did the trick. Relatively speaking.

He learned a wide variety of other skills this way, either through looking up videos, or watching others do it. Some judo throws that a kid his size could pull off with some practice, a little bit of aikido, learning how to tie knots, and for no reason whatsoever, baking pastries.

Hunger never chooses a convenient time to strike.

Also, there was his talent of being able to mask his emotions. Saying the wrong thing in front of his mother, looking too vulnerable and scared around the kids who picked on him, it always got him in trouble. So no matter how turbulent the storm inside of his heart was, no matter how much it hurt or how badly he wanted to _just make it stop_ , he realized that keeping a straight face, or faking a smile, or pretending to be upset about something he shouldn’t be happy about was the only way to make sure nothing bad ever happened. The hardest part was remembering how other people would act when trying to fake an emotion different from the one they were feeling. A mouth with upturned corners isn’t the same as a smile, tears don’t necessarily mean sadness, anger could easily be pain and fear trying to look scary. Learning what to do and what to say in certain situations, knowing what to do rather than acting how you felt, it was no easy task, to put it mildly.

Probably the thing that ended up being the most troublesome was something he liked to call “Mock ESP”.

It was always hard to tell what his mother would be like on certain days. Sometimes she put on a facade of an ordinary, caring, doting mother who made cookies and worked hard at her job. She would come home with a poor imitation of a smile on her face, not because it was insincere but because it was just plain _off_. Still, it usually meant that the day would be relatively painless, at least physically.

Usually.

Other times, it was all a ruse to lure him into a false sense of security. An almost admirable tactic from a strategic point of view. Either she was being nice because she was planning something behind his back, or she was keeping up appearances to stop herself from outright _snapping_. It scared the hell out of him, not knowing if she was genuinely happy or if he was dealing with the calm before the storm, but luckily he was able to pick up certain songs from her that meant one thing or the other.

Small things like changes in countenance. Body language. Twitches in the fingers or feet, shifts in stance, speech patterns. A glance over in this direction, shoulders facing another direction. One heavy breath per minute. Nervous habits, like biting your lip, sucking your cheek, rubbing your wrists. Little idiosyncrasies that told a story better than words did. God knows he can’t rely on people to say what’s on their minds.

Though look who’s talking, right?

He learned how to get answers out of people without asking them directly. Questions or other phrases would trigger certain reactions that told him everything he needed to know. Misdirecting the conversation to make himself seem a little less suspicious. It turned out to be useful when talking to Mother, it was a safe way to speak with her about a subject without actually talking about the subject at all.

And of course, his mother, in an effort to make him into the success she never was (or as much of a success as a quirkless kid could be), made him study all day during Sunday by giving him large books to read with the promise that he’d only get to eat dinner if he read.

One of those books was a Sherlock Holmes novel. He glanced at the page and initially groaned a bit at the Victorian era style of text and the bits of foreign dialect that made it hard to understand, but he grabbed a dictionary and made it work. The book was, to say the least, very interesting. He was enthralled immediately after the first chapter, riveted by the amount of detail put into the people and places. His heart raced during the tense scenes, every inch of him tingling with excitement, his mind under a spell or enchantment as he flipped each page with a vigor he oh-so-rarely got to feel in his daily life.

He ended up asking his mom to buy him more Sherlock books, which she was pleasantly surprised about. It worked out better than he expected, since from then on due pretty much just left him alone on Sundays, assuming he was reading Sherlock. 

From then on, Sherlock became his personal hero, which was a bit ironic considering he lived in a world where heroes actually exist, and have powers that make the deductive reasoning of the investigator look like child’s play. But Nagisa cared very little for heroes like All Might, who coasted by with raw power and natural charisma, or Endeavor, who clearly wasn’t as interested in saving lives as he was the fame and fortune of his career. No, the real heroes were the people who helped others with skill and intelligence, who stepped up to the plate even when they weren’t guaranteed a win. Those who put themselves out there to protect those who needed it, not because they could or felt obligated to, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

So he took a lead from Sherlock’s book. Other kids mimicked pro heroes like All Might, but Nagisa focused on honing the skills of his own hero, the _only_ real hero in his book. While he had very little prowess in terms of social skills, being a self proclaimed wallflower, he learned enough from Sherlock to combine deductive reasoning with his ability to scan body language and other things, and eventually he was able to develop the ability to gather information about someone with a single glance.

He remembered that a teacher once asked him if he was really quirkless, because he had once been able to guess her age, quirk, hobbies, and family simply from clues he picked up. They were in art class, and he noticed that the teacher kept coming back with cups of water from outside. The water was too clean to be from a stream or even a hose, and her own palms were wet each time, so he asked her if she had hydrokinesis. He then guessed she was around thirty to thirty five years, because she had come to school with a Valentine’s Day card from her son, and Nagisa guessed from the handwriting on the front that it was a boy between the ages of ten and thirteen. She was also divorced, he noticed, since she wore no wedding band despite having a child, but there was a faint tan line on her ring finger indicating she’d once worn one. Speaking of her fingers, the pads were calloused and the palms had some blisters, so he guessed she was into music, specifically guitar. She also had a white cat, if the pet hairs on her shirt were anything to go by.

Needless to say, the teacher was freaked out. But Nagisa personally knew that it wasn’t a big deal. To be honest, most of those guesses he made were just that, guesses. An assumption that’s probably right isn’t the same thing as a summation that is definitely right. He knew that he must’ve gotten a little too personal though, and he apologized, he hadn’t meant to be so invasive. He also asked the teacher not to tell anyone about him, since he didn’t want to draw even more unnecessary attention to himself. Being quirkless, it’s better to fall into the background and stay quiet instead of standing out and being picked on as a result. It’s a natural law of survival, isn’t it?

Sometimes he did it for fun or for practice. He tries to guess who that one girl sitting next to him is writing a love letter to, or why that one kid is always getting sent to the nurse. The answer is usually what he expects, (the love letter is to that one popular guy, because of course it is, the kid goes to the nurse for asthma complications), but it’s a nice way to pass the time when he’s bored.

He never saw himself as anyone special. His skill at deductive reasoning, his ability to read people, one might consider those things impressive, but the fact was that he only had those abilities because of circumstances. He just so happens to be put in situations where he developed these abilities. He wasn’t a hero, he wasn’t a genius. He was someone who had to survive in this world, this world where men are not born equal.

He was a broken boy, one who had nothing more than his wits and his desire to help others. Helping others wouldn’t make him anyone’s hero, and yeah, it’s selfish to want to be a good person just to make yourself feel better, but in the end, there was no merit to helping himself, so he may as well help others, right? Right.

One way or another, he was just a kid without anything to make him special, and that was... well it wasn’t _fine_ , but it’s not as though it’s the end of the world.

Besides, there’s next to nothing he could do about it. He was a drifter in a sea of solitude.

And then he met Korosensei.

* * * * *

His time in the “end class” had been the best year of his life.

His mother was pissed that his grades were so low that he ended up in 3-E. Truthfully, he had about average marks in most of everything, but that was only when he was focused. It’s hard enough to focus when your mind forcibly crams every little detail about your surroundings into your brain, but the divorce on top of it was too much to handle, and his grades sank like the Titanic.

Their teacher? A yellow octopus monster. It was the most bizarre thing he had ever experienced. But it was also the most fun. It may sound surprising that being forced to train to become an assassin just so you can off your teacher would be fun, but strangely enough, it was the catalyst for some of the best experiences he’d ever had.

As well as a few of the worst.

Regardless, he’d never felt more free, more _alive_ than when he was in that class. He managed to bring his overall GPA up a little. He became closer to his classmates, all of whom were more or less comrades to him. He made friends. He spoke up when he had something to contribute. He stood up for himself a bit more. He joined in on group activities. He even managed to reconnect with his first (and at the time, only) friend Karma Akabane.

There was also the murder attempts.

As weird as it sounds, the assassinations were thrilling to carry out, even if they usually ended in failure. For every single time they crashed, they came out having learned something new. And they kept trying, mostly for the hell of it, because it gave them all a purpose, and also because, well, why not?

It was the first time in his life he was actually _included_. They asked for his input, they valued the information he collected, they needed him to partake in each attempt. Each time it came as a huge surprise, and it took a while for him to stop thinking that they would all inevitably get bored of him, ostracize him, and abandon him. Most people would, but he knew they weren’t most people. These people were better than that.

Karma, to his credit, seemed to feel bad for what he did. Nagisa never really blamed him for it, he understood fully. Who wants to be friends with a quirkless loser, anyway? But even so, it still really hurt. Forgiving was different from forgetting. The pain of being left behind like he meant nothing wasn’t anything new to him, but that didn’t make it sting any less. It was a permanent mark on their history, one that Karma covered up with colorful paint and casualness that came naturally to him. It made Nagisa a little envious, the way his friend could move along with his life, all with that cocky smirk and don’t-give-a-single-shit attitude. Such a wonderful, wonderful jerk, that guy.

Karma seemed to think that the best way to make it up to his friend was to train him personally. Unfortunately for Nagisa, his method of training could best be described as making a run through hell, twice a day, every day. After school they would find a spot on the mountain that no one ever visited, and... Karma didn’t hold back. Though to be fair, Nagisa all but begged him to do whatever it takes to make him stronger, so maybe the blue haired boy shouldn’t be surprised.

Sometimes they’d run laps around the entire mountain. Other times they’d do hand to hand training. The CQC was especially tough, since Karma was the strongest in the class in terms of raw combat prowess, and Nagisa, to put it bluntly, had the build of a stick figure. Every day he’d go home bruised and sore, once even receiving a sprained wrist. Karma apologized and offered to take him to the hospital, but Nagisa said that it was fine. He hid this from his mother as much as he could, explaining the injury as a bad fall, and his absences as him “studying” with a friend, which was half true, in a way.

Other than that, Karma had been genuinely surprised at the sheer level of grit Nagisa showed. Some things were rather easy for the smaller boy, such as hunting and tracking and stealth training. Other things he worked at until he dropped, like endurance and resilience building.

Though the tracking and stealth training ended up being more or less of a curse. Karma’s quirk, Alpha Wolf, gave him the sharp canines of a wild dog, as well as retractable claws and an enhanced sense of smell and hearing. The fangs were a constant part of him, though he could make them grow and shrink at will, as were the senses. Regular Karma was bad enough to deal with, but when he was truly in his element, the best chance you have of escaping him is praying to any of the gods you believe in.

Nagisa managed to get around this by using different anti-tracking methods that he picked up over the years. He would smear himself in mud to mask his scent, learned how to move around the woods silently even when it was dark (this proved to be useful for sneaking into the house without his mother ever noticing when she was in one of her bad moods), and even went as far as to set up traps and keep tabs on the redhead’s thought process. Even so, during the first few weeks where he had to learn through trial and error, the idea of having _Karma_ hunting him was absolutely terrifying. It was all he could do to keep his wildly hammering heart from giving him away in some situations. Good thing he had a great poker face.

While Nagisa ultimately failed to gain a slightly bulkier body than what he had, he was glad that at least his build slightly improved. His arms and leg muscles had gone from soft and doughy to tough and strong, and they were well defined rather than being thick. He’d gained a little bit of core strength as well, so overall, while he couldn’t say he was as strong as a boy his age ought to be, he at least wasn’t quite as fragile as before, and thank god for that.

Karma and Korosensei were far from the only ones to teach him different things. Every one of his classmates taught him one thing or another, whether it be Okuda’s vast knowledge of poisions and toxins, Itona’s hacking abilities, Okano’s acrobatics, Hayami’s balance and precision, or Nakamura’s excellency in English. Even Muramastsu was generous enough to teach him how to ride a motorcycle. He was weird, but cool.

Each time he went in for a private lesson with his friends, he was sure they’d say no, but all of them were so kind and caring that they didn’t even question it. Nagisa truthfully wanted to have a wide array of skill sets simply for the sake of adaptability. Those most willing to adapt are the strongest type of assassin.

He had no idea what this would end up getting him into.

* * * * *  
  
  


”Nagisa, a word please?”

Karasuma-sensei called out just before Nagisa reached the door. Nagisa, as usual, had been the last one to leave. It was a bit of a habit; the bluenette was always a little reluctant to start heading home, for obvious reasons.

Nagisa froze in the doorway. Something in his stomach felt that there was tension in the air, and he turned around to face the government official. The notepad in the boy’s hand crumpled a bit as he clenched it tightly.

Korosensei had left earlier than usual, most likely because of the swimsuit competition meant to be showcased on tv later. Such a perv.

Bitch-sensei was also waiting for him, but far from her usual raunchy poses and half smug, half flirty countenance (he suspected it was a habit of hers), her back was leaning against the wall and she had a tense posture, her face a mask of seriousness. She had her cherry red lips pressed tightly together, her crystal eyes locked firmly on the ground, and her brows knitted together.

Nope, he definitely wasn’t nervous at all. _Not_.

Their wavelengths showed him that they were uneasy and sober, their heartbeats steady but their consciousness levels all being kicked into overdrive. He felt a knot tie itself up in his gut, but kept a neutral appearance.

“Yes?” He asked, pretending not to read the room.

Karasuma drew himself up to full height, his usual professional stoicism giving way to a look of appraisal.

”Nagisa,” the man spoke, his voice just as deep and calm as always, “There is someone who wishes to speak to you.”

Unsure of what to expect, the middle schooler turned his attention to the far side of the room. He had tried not to pay any attention, but there was someone waiting outside the sliding door.

Speak of the devil, the door slid right open and in walked a man that looked a great deal familiar. Very tall and rather old looking, with dark hair that had once been a buzzcut but was now growing out. He had a distinctly vicious but impassive appearance, like a sleeping lion, with leathery pale skin and faint white scars, and a face that reminded him a little bit of Frankenstein’s monster, though he knew better than to ever say that to someone out loud. Tired circles under cold, dangerous eyes scanned the boy, and then twitched with familiarity. Guess the man recognized him too.

”Nagisa, my boy.” The man spoke with a very thick accent and gravelly voice.

Nagisa let himself grin a little. “Lovro.”

* * * * *

Three months later, the assassination was finally complete. Korosensei was now dead.

The news, government, general public, and plenty of hero associations were all going absolutely insane. In less than a mere six hours, headlines were already being made of the “twenty eight heroes” and their takedown of the world’s most infamous villain.

The press was forbidden from interviews with any of them, even their teachers. Absolutely no one was to know anything about the true nature of the classroom. As far as everyone in the public knew, the students had been held hostage for an unknown amount of time, but were able to work together in order to defeat the monster. No one knew how, and no one was allowed to ask.

All Might had arrived on the scene not long after the deed was done. He found over two dozen kids crumpled in heaps at their desks, with his usual catchphrase of “Never fear, for I am here!”, and made a long winded speech about how they had done a very brave thing and they were all safe now, seemingly unaware that _none_ of them were in the mood for any of that.

He went up to console Nagisa specifically, apparently aware that he was the one who had dealt the killing blow, but the bluenette, who had yet to say a word, wasn’t going to have it. He sat still and “listened” as the number one hero rattled off a bunch of crap he wasn’t able to hear, and frankly didn’t want to. After a while, Karma, seemingly able to sense his friend’s silent distress and irritation, was able to rescue him by claiming that the smaller boy wasn’t feeling well. All Might seemed to realize that he was being a little to invasive and backed off, leaving Nagisa to be promptly collected and swooped away by the redhead.

Two days after all that, while Nagisa was lying in his bed and trying not to cry, the light that filtered through his windows was suddenly blacked out.

He quickly got up, locked his door, and went over to open his curtains.

Lovro was there, perched on the edge of his windowsill like some sort of hawk. He looked ridiculously unnatural wearing a civilian outfit. A black trench coat rested over long blue jeans and tall military boots. A fedora sat on top of his head.

Nagisa unlocked his window and slid it up. “ _Sensei!_ ” He whispered harshly.

Lovro grinned sadistically.

* * * * *  
  


”The higher ups have given you a brand new mission.”

”What is it, sensei?”

”They want you to infiltrate a known hero school, and collect intelligence.”

It took everything inside of Nagisa not to spit out his tea. “Excuse me?”

”Yes, my boy.” Lovro took a long swig of brandy from a hip flask. “The school in question happens to be the best of the whole country. UA to be precise.”

In the darkness of the room, Nagisa blanched quite a bit.

”Sir,” he tried to reason, “I’m no hero. In fact, I—“

”I understand, dear boy. But this is a decision that can’t be altered.”

”Why? Why do I have to...?”

”Nagisa.” Lovro sighed somberly. “Son, I wasn’t told everything about this, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because they want to get updates on the newest generation of heroes. They’re hoping that a man on the inside of a hero agency will be able to provide us with key info.”

The kid frowned. “Where’s the logic in that?”

”I don’t think I know. But a student like yourself will draw far less suspicion than any adult. Unfortunately, that also means that you’ll have to take the entrance exam, just to lessen the chances of someone looking into your past.”

Nagisa felt himself wilt a little. He was no hero, not at all. He’s killed too many people, done too many heinous acts. He wasn’t anyone’s savior. He was the exact opposite.

How was someone like him supposed to pretend to be a hero? To act like a guardian of the people when he was really just a killing machine. Even if he wasn’t, he was still just a small quirkless boy. No one would take him seriously, no one who didn’t know what he was capable of.

His skill set wasn’t suited for combat or heroism. Being able to kill wasn’t exactly a good thing to put on his application. Nor was his creepy Mock ESP. Would they accept a late application? Did they even allow quirkless kids to apply? It’s not like he was anything special physically, after all. Obviously his assassination training made him a bit stronger than he was before, but considering that it was the school that only had a 1/300 acceptance rate, he suspected being slightly lean wasn’t going to be enough.

His grades were another problem entirely, because while he was by no means stupid, he was sent to E-Class for a reason. Now that he had a full time gig as an assassin, it wasn’t like he had a lot of time to spare for studying. How he was going to prepare for the entrance exam, as well as keep his grades up in class, there was no way of knowing.

Oh yeah, there was the practical exam too. Yeah, he’s gonna get flattened.

Three weeks to train and study. Basically no time in the day. A small, helpless body, no quirk, no prior experience.

This was— it was literally impossible. No way could he compete with the kids who had powerful quirks, intelligence, athletic prowess, and far more. It just wasn’t possible.

But, he supposed, assassinating the top villain of Japan was never meant to be possible either.

He swore internally. This’ll be fun.

_Yeah, about as fun as a **lynching**._


	2. Basically a Walking Question Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nagisa does the exam, but not before making a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that I’m not alone, when I say I’m sick of the violence.

What It Means to Be a Hero

_Way back before quirks ever existed, a margin of people in society were tasked with keeping the world safe. People such as police officers, doctors, firefighters, the military. People who citizens were reliant on to keep everyone safe, and keep them safe they did. Doctors were tasked with bringing people back from the brink of death. Police were there to ensure everyone followed the law, since the law exists for a reason. Firefighters rescued people, not just from house fires but from other disasters as well. The military serves as a way to keep an entire country under protection. These days, those kinds of people are utterly overlooked and underestimated. Why? Because nowadays, we have heroes._

_Heroes brought a new age to the world. In a time where the concept of people who used their immense power in order to serve and protect was something out of a fairy tale or comic book, those who rose up to fight for the sake of others were deemed as gods. At a time where the world needed it most, quirks became the norm, and everyone was given the power to become a hero._

_Was that really for the better, though?_

_It’s no secret that if quirks had never emerged in the first place, society would be a lot further along than it is. I have a friend that did the math in regards to the technological regression that resulted from the sudden emergence of quirks. Apparently, quirks at this point are a replacement for the tech that we lost in the chaos of adapting to a world of super powers. He also griped about how we should be in space by now, but I digress. In the end, we cannot be sure that it was ever worth it. But regardless, a quirkless society would be just as far along as we are now, if not further._

_So, what is the point I am trying to make with all this? Simply put, I believe that you don’t need to have a quirk to be a hero._

_This may seem like an obvious statement at first glance, but the truth is quite the opposite. Exactly ten months ago from today, a quirkless kid ran in to save his friend from a sludge monster villain. In the end, he managed to accomplish little on his own, but he bought enough time for All Might himself to rush to the scene. The story was all over the news for a short amount of time before abruptly transitioning over to another hero story about a tax evader being caught in a police chase. But I don’t think anyone bothers to point out the heroism of the quirkless boy in the situation. That one boy was willing to risk his life to save the victim, even though he likely wouldn’t have been able to do much. Of course, rather than being commended, he was scolded for trying to do what the pro heroes couldn’t. Granted, running out to confront a villain without a plan in mind is certainly far from intelligent, but the bigger issue in the eyes of the pros was the fact that a quirkless boy tried to be a hero, tried to save a life._

_The point that I am trying to make here is that society views quirkless people, such as myself, and people with more or less useless quirks as just that: useless. Worthless. Kids without heroic quirks are ridiculed. Kids with heroic quirks are heaped an unnecessary amount of praise and subsequently taught to look down on those with lesser abilities. A child could have near genius level intellect, but it is ignored in favor of any flashy abilities. Society has nurtured children to overlook brains in favor of brawn. So a person with a bad quirk is told he or she cannot he a hero, or anything at all sometimes._

_Reading this may make me sound like a bit of a cynic, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, I bring up all these points in an effort to get you to understand my motivations._

_I want to change society._

_Before you go on thinking that I’m crazy, hear me out. You see, I’ve been thinking a lot, and what if, just what if, a quirkless hero were to suddenly rise up? Maybe he wouldn’t become number one, with each generation growing stronger (I’m sure you’ve heard of that theory), but instead, he’d serve as an inspiration, or a reminder that you don’t need to be all that powerful in order to become a hero. A way of telling everyone that hey, if a quirkless kid became a hero when others said he couldn’t, then that means you can too!_

_Okay, I admit, it’s a bit idealistic of me to assume that I alone can change the world. But I don’t plan on doing this all alone. As people see me trying and struggling to reach the top, they’ll see no reason to hold back themselves, and they’ll fight their hardest to show that they, too, can change the world. That’s the kind of society I want. Instead of people just sitting back and waiting for things to change, they make an effort to change it themselves. It’s easy to just sit back and pray for things to go your way, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough just to want something. If you care, you’ll take action._

_That’s the kind of world I believe I can help to create. And you could say that a hero is someone who fights to change the world for the better. Well, that’s what I plan to do. Fight my way to victory, and show the world that you, too, can be a hero._

* * * * *

Nagisa will admit: initially, when he first wrote that essay, he’d been bullshitting the whole thing. He’d needed to submit _something_ , after all, and he couldn’t very well say he wanted to be a hero because he felt like it.

But as he slipped it into the mailbox and snapped it shut, he didn’t feel like he had been really lying. His intentions weren’t what he wrote on the paper, but most of it was true: to change the world, you need to be the first person to take the first big step. Nagisa was going to be one of the first ever quirkless kids to enroll in UA. Specifically, the hero course.

At first, he’d considered settling for the General Studies course. It seemed like that was where kids who wanted a normal high school experience went. You get into the top school in the country, a place that trains you to properly use your quirk, and you don’t even _need_ to be a hero. But in the end, more than anything else, he decided it was best to just follow orders.

And... okay, maybe he wanted to see if he could place somewhere high in the entrance exams. Not that he had much hope, but still, when faced with a sudden challenge, both his curiosity, something he self-nurtured over the years, and his desire for a tough battle, which he only recently discovered he had, would join forces and win the day.

His mother, naturally, was beyond pissed off. She spent the whole day raging at him like a homicidal bull in a China shop. She threw her favorite designer vase with pinpoint accuracy and would have nailed him on the side of his face if he hadn’t put his arm up at the last minute. After that, she screamed at him until it sounded like her throat was being ripped raw, shrieking about how he was “meant to go to Ishimaru High” and how he was “ruining his chances at a happy life”, and how he “could never become a hero, all heroes are successful and you’re nothing but a worthless brat!”, and she kept going until she’d shouted herself hoarse. Then to vent out steam, she fed his mind a bombardment of bright, intense colors, flashing in and out of his vision in such an optical cacophony that he was certain he was gonna have a seizure.

But after he endured if for a couple of minutes or so, like usual, he took his chance before she went too far. Like usual. He told her that becoming a hero was the best course for him, because a lot of heroes start their own successful businesses and agencies. He would end up making a lot of money. All that money would go to her. All of it. He swore it.

In the end, she didn’t say yes or no. That was code for “You’re right, but I don’t want to acknowledge that, so I’ll pretend to be mad at you while I think about it.” Overall, he felt like he succeeded.

Except his mom started taking a bunch of later shifts at work, as if to avoid him. She stopped asking about how his day was, refused to cook him dinner, didn’t so much as look his way when he came home. She only spoke to him when she needed something from him. She left him alone for days on end.

Great, she’s being like _that_ again.

He was familiar enough with her moods to know when she was ignoring him out of spite. It usually lasts for quite a while, depending on how angry she is. Any time he does something she doesn’t like but can’t reverse, she has either one of two responses: the first is that she’ll lock him up in his room for a couple of days (he’s learned how to give the excuse that he gets sick very easily), refuse to let him eat, and if he refuses to apologize, which he’s rarely stupid enough to do, she’ll tie up his wrists and connect him to the ceiling fan so that he can’t lie or kneel down. He’ll have to remain standing for hours and hours, until his knees become sore and his arms are about to be torn out of his sockets and his wrists are bleeding from the rope burn and he’s starting to hallucinate from sleep deprivation.

Or, she’ll just ignore him.

He can practically _feel_ himself cheering whenever she chooses the latter. He’d throw a party if he could handle any sort of social convention.

He felt guilty for upsetting her, but in the end, he knew it was for the best that she left him alone. It meant that she no longer cared when he came home late, or showed up with bruises and burns and cuts and wounds, or snuck out at night. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. Either way, he was lucky she went for the ignoring him option, since he _really_ could not afford to neglect his training.

Speaking of which, he needs to study. Not sure exactly what sort of exam it was gonna be, he just went around all of his subjects. He did math equations on an online tutoring course until he started seeing numbers when he slept, and it seemed to be making him a little better. He read Shakespeare, and then Sherlock, of course. He’d never go into a test without sharpening his mind with some of Sherlock’s best. The man was a genius all the way around, so maybe somehow the knowledge will seep into his brain.

Imagine that.

Nagisa’s method of preparing for the practical part of the exam ended up just being him doing his job. He figured that the best kinds of training were via hands on experience. So, each night, he took up every hit that was assigned. The higher ups were at first a bit surprised that he was suddenly being so gung-ho, until they remembered his long term scouting mission, or so he liked to call it. Then they just have it to him.

One morning, he was heading home at about six in the morning, having spent a particularly long night hunting down a local villain and sniping him. He had finished a bit later than he intended, so now he was going to have to take a long nap and die slowly.

He decided to take a shortcut and walk along the beach. It was a nice morning; the coastal breeze made the air smell fresh and salty, and cooled off his sweat from the previous hours of stalking and sniping. It was starting to get warmer now that April was coming around. The wind kicked up some fine white sand and itched his ankles.

Nagisa couldn’t help but notice how the beach was far cleaner than it had once been. A few months back, it was pretty much a dump. As in, people literally treated it like a dump, stacking some of their trashed items like old furniture, household appliances, broken cars, beer bottles, and various other things that looked rat infested. Now the beach was naked, all the garbage heaped up now suddenly gone. Barely anything at all was left. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now, walking on the sand like this, it seemed so obvious it was laughable.

It didn’t take him long to figure out why.

On his way to the boardwalk, where he’d be able to cut through to get to his own apartment, he passed someone. A boy around his age, not much taller than himself and with hair that looked a bit like a shrub, all messy and forest green. The stranger was carrying a shattered television set over his shoulder, and was carrying it with ease. He was shirtless, and...

Oh, now that’s just unfair.

The guy was _ripped_. Lean, perfectly built biceps and forearms. Washboard abs that could grate cheese. Large strong hands and chiseled calves.

Nagisa felt a pang of envy. How did he get like that? Maybe he has a personal trainer? Well, now he knows who’s responsible for the beach cleanup.

He wondered, did he do this by himself? Why? Why go through all that effort for something no one will thank him for? It’s not like anyone ever visits the beach dump. Is he doing it to train himself in lifting? But he wouldn’t have to pick up a whole beach just to get stronger, he’d just need to visit the gym.

Guess maybe he lost all his faith in humanity a little too early.

He was staring for so long he accidentally made eye contact.

The muscular boy had emerald eyes that seemed to glance away the second they met his own, like the stranger was used to being stared at. Nagisa caught a small glimpse of his wavelength: when they met eyes, he saw the boy’s heart rate shoot straight up, and then climb back down slowly. Weird. And for some reason he had a slightly erratic wavelength, like that of a person with anxiety issues. It was fast one second, slow the next, and there was little to no in between.

Nagisa slung his backpack around on his shoulders. His age, his physique, and his nervousness; the stranger was trying to get into UA. He just knew it.

He gave the boy a smile as he walked on. He didn’t say a word, just silently gave a wish of good luck to the kid that would soon be his fellow examinee.

* * * * *  
  


Izuku Midoriya was ten days away from the day of his life, the day that would decide his future. The day that would mark his journey to becoming a hero. Once he passed these exams, he’d start his path to being the next bearer of One For All, and make its predecessors proud.

 _If_ he passed, that is.

The thought made his guts do backflips, so he focused on the task at hand.

The beach was looking cleaner by the day, and he couldn’t help but feel proud. But at the same time, he knew he didn’t have much time left. He’d need to work overdrive if he wanted to finish the whole beach before the deadline.

Or maybe, he thought, he won’t finish. Or All Might will change his mind about him. Or the power transfer won’t work. Or—

No! Bad thoughts! Bad!

He hauled a shattered television set over his shoulder, and was about to put it in the pile, when he felt someone staring at him.

He met eyes with...

...a girl?

Maybe, but he couldn’t tell. The stranger had powder blue hair that looked like it was made of strands of silk. It was pulled back into a low ponytail, and matched the person’s glittering, crystal orbs. They had a petite build and pale, fragile looking skin. Their face was a bit dirty, their hands covered in scars. A long black coat hung loosely over their delicate frame over blue jeans and a plan white t-shirt. Combat boots went all the way up to the knees.

Well, if it did happen to be a girl, she was a very cute one.

What.

How could such a shameless though pop into his head?!

Argh, she was still staring! He turned his head away quickly before she could see his face heating up.

When he turned back to face her, she was smiling at him. It wasn’t a flirty sort of smile (thank god, he’d die on the spot), but it wasn’t particularly friendly. Rather, it seemed to be a quiet sort of support. There was something reassuring in the way she looked at him, like she was silently encouraging him.

He didn’t know if she saw him smile back at her.

A moment later, All Might in his skinny form arrived on the beach to check on his progress.

“Good morning, Young Midoriya!” All Might waved cheerily. His smaller body wasn’t quite as suited for being as happy and bold as his hero form, but Izuku was nonetheless feeling brighter just from seeing him. It was always great seeing his hero, regardless of what he looked like.

”A-All Might!”

”You seem to be in a good mood today, my boy! Did something happen?” The blonde man quirked his brow.

Izuku shrugged. “Uh, nothing particularly really. I woke up a bit early, and also there was this girl who—“

Wait.

Suddenly, Izuku stumbled over his own words. His whole face turned scarlet as his eyes widened.

“Ohmygoda _girl_ justsmiledatme—“

All Might laughed heartily.

* * * * *  
  


He saw the girl every day after that, for a week and a half until the exam.

She wore the same outfit each time, and she gave him the same smile. It wasn’t an outrageously bright grin like All Might’s, but somehow, it made him feel just as inspirited. Maybe it was _because_ it was much more subtle. She seemed like the type that didn’t smile much, either out of shyness or because she didn’t have much to grin about.

The thought made a knot tie itself in his chest. There was just no way she would ever deserve to not smile often. She seemed so nice and sweet.

Then again, he never really talked to her.

But still! He was pretty good at guessing people, or at least he thought so. And the girl was, to put it mildly, an enigma. He just couldn’t get a read on her, other than a few things he can guess just from when she walks by and gives him a look. She’s kind and friendly, but probably a bit shy. She also has to have a reason for appearing at the beach every day. He’d never noticed her before, so the fact that she was suddenly showing up wherever he happened to be was strange. Other than that, she was a mystery. Mannish clothes with a backpack over he shoulder, sometimes covered in sweat and bruises but never looking worse for wear. He’d be worried if she didn’t flash him that kind look, a look that told him that everything would be okay.

But yeah. She’s basically a walking question mark.

  
* * * * *  
  


This.

This is it.

Izuku stares up at the entrance of UA. His whole body is trembling with sheer excitement. Every inch of him is buzzing, and his ears are ringing. Why won’t his heart slow down?

He doesn’t want to mess this up. No, he refuses to mess this up.

A part of him wonders if One For All has yet to transfer itself into his body. If it doesn’t, then he’ll be mincemeat in the practical. No, All Might said it’d kick in in time. Even so, he has no idea how to use it, so how is he—?

No. He can’t afford to psyche himself out. He has to do this. He just has to.

But what if he can’t?

He has to calm down now, or he’ll just end up getting so worked up that he’ll bomb the whole exam. Oh god, he‘ll bomb the whole exam...!

He searches his brain for calming images to put himself at ease.

The first All Might video he watched? No, that’s just a scary reminder of what he’s trying to achieve.

His mom’s home cooking? Maybe, but that just makes him hungry.

Kacchan?

Kind of hard to be calmed by the images of a friend who became his tormentor.

Then his search for a relaxing memory landed on the girl from the beach.

Her smile was so soft and soothing. She seemed to tell him, just with a look, that nothing bad would happen to him. Those ocean eyes looked at him, but instead of seeing a pathetic, quirkless loser, she just saw a person, a person in need of reassurance.

He’d wanted so desperately to talk to her before the start of the test. But that day, she didn’t show up at the beach.

He’d been worried, considering it was the first time in a week and a half of consecutive appearances that she failed to show. But he’d forced himself to push away that concern. He needs to focus on the exam. 

_You’ll be okay_ , she would always say with her eyes.

In a way, he felt like if he failed the tests, he’d be letting _her_ down as well. It was strange. He didn’t know her name, how old she was, and yet he felt like failing her would be the worst thing in the world. All the kind glances she sent his way, like she somehow knew that he was about to face the trial of his life, and wanted him to know that she supported him.

Can you consider someone you’ve never even talked to a friend? He wouldn’t know.

_For her sake, I’ll move forwards. Because thanks to All Might, I’m actually gonna become a hero!_

Izuku lurches forward...

...and promptly trips on his own feet.

Or I’ll just die.

He fully expects to hit the ground face first, but something else happens: he yelps as he feels himself being grabbed by the wrist, and is yanked backwards. Well, not really backwards. Mainly because he instinctively plants his heel into the stone path, and ends up doing a sharp 180 turn to face the person who had caught him.

”Almost didn’t catch you.”

* * * * *  
  


Yep, he knew it. The kid he kept on seeing during his morning routes was a student wanting to enter UA High.

Nagisa had kept on taking the shortcut along the beach. He didn’t know why; he suspected it was because a small part of him was pulled in by the green boy, the one that made him think of Kayano and her dyed, jade colored hair. And the way he grew flustered, and then nervously waved every time they saw each other reminded him a bit of Okuda.

He missed his friends. Ever since he was given the chance to become a true, full fledged assassin, he’d been so busy with work that he neglected his old classmates. Hits that could only be done at night, recon missions that took up most of his schedule, cover ups that gave him migraines from the sheer workload... who knew professional murder could be so stressful?

Okay, scratch that.

He remembered Karma once telling him, “You’ll end up with white hairs before you turn thirty.” And he believed it.

Which is why he went to the liberty of cutting his hair before the exam.

It wasn’t meant to be stylish, and he just meant to cut away enough so that it wouldn’t get in his way during the tests. Still, he couldn’t help but have mixed feelings about the result. Having had no time to go to a barber, and wanting to go into his potential new school as a way to start fresh in his life, he decided to give it a snip.

More like a hacking.

When he held the scissors up to the first lock, he ended up stopping just before he could close the blades; his grip tightened and his hand shook slightly. A violent drumming thundered in his ears.

Why?

This wasn’t supposed to be difficult. He was starting a new chapter in his life. He had to cut it. He had to cut off them all away.

His mom would be mad, that much he knew, but it was more than that. Was it maybe that he’s never had a proper haircut for as long as he could remember. It still shouldn’t be this hard though.

Was it because...

Maybe.

Maybe he’s scared.

Scared of changing? Or scared of taking control? Or maybe a combination of both. Maybe he’s also a little scared of what his mother would do, but even beyond the threats and the violence, he never wants to hurt her, in any way. Because then the guilt eats away at him, followed by the regret and the self loathing.

He wants to be different. He wants to be more than just a vicious killer, a useless son, a quirkless kid with nothing to offer the world.

At the very least, he can just pretend. Pretend that this miserable life he leads isn’t his.

Nagisa is...

 ~~An assassin.~~ A hero.

His mother ~~terrifies him~~ is strict but very loving. His father ~~walked out on them~~ is just not around due to work. During his childhood he ~~was bullied for being powerless~~ had few friends but a good education. He works as a ~~hitman for hire~~ intern for a Support Gear company. He has friends from his middle school, but he doesn’t talk to them as much these days, ~~even though he should~~ because he’s too busy.

~~He killed someone innocent.~~

He could never kill anyone.

~~He killed Korosensei.~~

He couldn’t.

~~He killed Korosensei.~~

~~He didn’t have any other choice.~~

~~None of us did.~~

Violently, he sliced his hair off.

* * * * *  
  


Nagisa was painfully aware of just how awful his haircut was. Thankfully he hadn’t snipped too much away, so he was able to salvage what was left. Still, it looked like someone had taken a razor blade to his head. His bangs were jagged and fell too loosely over his eyes, and he kept having to sweep it to the side with his hand. One side was cut shorter than the other, and he couldn’t tell for sure but he just _knew_ that the back was atrociously uneven. He hadn’t accounted for the layers either, which meant that some locks stuck out to the side a little while others stayed flat. Overall, it gave him a horribly windswept appearance, which was fine since he was still outside, but he knew he’d stick out like a sore thumb once he got indoors.

But at least it was shorter.

When his mom saw how short he had cut it, not to mention his horrific job of doing so, she lost her absolute _shit_. Seriously, her rampage was a sight to behold. She must have realized though that she couldn’t physically hurt him too badly since he still had to take his test and people would notice if he performed poorly due to an injury, but that didn’t stop her from hurling dirty dishes, threats of severe harm, and her breakfast at his face. She pulled on his messed up hair so bad that she nearly tore out strands, slapped him a few times, threw him against the wall, and once she had calmed down enough, he spent the rest of his morning having her stab his joints with needles like an unlicensed acupuncturist.

He thought he got off pretty light.

They were all too small of wounds to really be noticed, and the only real noticeable signs of damage were the small bandages littered on his knees and fingers, which he could easily explain as being from a bad fall. Also the dark circles under his eyes could be written off as a lack of sleep. He was about to take an exam, so it’s believable, right?

Either way, he was sure anyone who gave him a passing glance would assume he’s homeless, especially since he wasn’t even wearing a uniform. Rather, he wore something that at least _looked_ somewhat like a uniform, from far away. Civilian clothes, he liked to call them. A silky white button-up under a wooly black v-neck commando sweater, a pair of khaki pants, and simple dress shoes. Slung over his shoulder was a large, green backpack. He also happened to have his school bag from last year at his side. Inside of it was his small collections of notepads and booklets, all filled to the brim with different kinds of information. One held the secrets of all known hero equipment, one was based entirely on quirk categories, one even stored knowledge on firearms. Inside the backpack, however, were a few... other things.

Hey, he checked the rules, and he’s allowed to bring in his own equipment. As far as UA knows, his various paraphernalia was acquired from the Support Company he interned under. Cyberpunk Industries, it was called. A normal, not-at-all-illegal company that manufactures weapons for not-at-all-forbidden uses.

Which reminds him: this isn't a normal entrance exam. Not just in general, but for him specifically. He's here on a mission, and if he can't get into this school, then he automatically fails said mission. These aren't tests. These are trials.

He knows full well what happens to the failures in the assassination business.

Trying not to shudder, he cast the thought away and continued on his path. When he walked up to the gates of his potential new school, the first thing he saw was a tuft of forest green hair. A small part of him was instantly ecstatic to see someone he recognized, even if it was just someone he passed by a few times.

That ecstasy was quickly squashed down by what happened next.

A boy with spiky ash-blond hair rudely brushed past him, purposefully knocking into his shoulder. His sharp, blood red eyes burned holes in Nagisa, glaring down at the bluenette like something he found stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

”Watch it, kid.” The blond snarled.

Nagisa frowned in response— this guy was the one that bumped into _him_ — but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help but notice the taller boy’s wavelengths were out of control, a torrent of negative aura and emotions. His heart rate was slow but thunderous, which was a telltale sign that someone was deeply agitated. He also noticed that he smelled strongly of...

...Is that _caramel_?

The angry kid moved on, and Nagisa was about to put the ordeal behind him when he saw the same guy suddenly scowl at the small green haired boy. This time the “scum at the bottom of his shoe” look was multiplied by at least ten.

“ _Deku_.” He spat.

The green haired kid, ‘Deku’, jumped— actually, more like _flinched_ — and spun around with a fearful look on his face.

”K-Kacchan?” He whimpered, his eyes wide with dread.

Hearing the way ‘Kacchan’ spoke to his... acquaintance, with derision and ugly contempt, and how scared ‘Deku’ looked at being called out to by this guy made something in Nagisa’s stomach start to burn, like a meal that was too spicy. He can’t tell if he feels sick or enraged or both and decides to quickly stomp it down before it can build up. No use getting worked up before the test even begins.

‘Kacchan’ bared his teeth. “Get out of my way before I set you on fire.”

’Deku’ nervously started waving his hands. “A-Ah! Oh hey, good morning! L-Let’s just do our best—!”

’Kacchan’, who apparently wasn’t listening, just stomped on by and made his way into the building.

‘Deku’ sighed, his body sagging with relief that there was no confrontation.

Once again Nagisa felt his blood boil, and once again he pushed it away. Still, it wasn’t easy. Those two could very well be friends, but it doesn’t change the fact that one is very clearly scared of the other. He knew bullies when he saw them, and he certainly was no fan. No one should be made to feel lesser than others. A part of him wondered what Karma would do in a situation like this. Probably something like set the bastard’s house on fire. And try to convince Nagisa to pay for the gasoline.

As soon as the thought left his head, he saw the green haired boy suddenly trip on his own leg and start falling.

Nagisa’s feet moved without him having to tell them. He shot like a bullet across the courtyard, time moving in slow motion. When he skid to a stop, he had a hold of the other boy’s wrist.

”Almost didn’t catch you.” He said, doing his best imitation of Karma, with a wry and confident smirk. Thinking of his best friend always made him feel far more self assured than he actually was, and right now this boy in front of him needed a person that could give him courage.

‘Deku’ looked at him for a few seconds, no doubt studying the bluenette’s untidy appearance before his dark emerald eyes flickered in sudden recognition.

”You’re...”

”Yep.” Nagisa pulled the boy upright. “I never caught your name during all those times I saw you.”

His new acquaintance suddenly began blushing madly as though Nagisa had just asked him for his number. It was kind of funny.

”Izuku Midoriya.” He mumbled so quietly that Nagisa barely even heard it at all.

He smiled in response. “Nagisa Shiota. But I prefer to be called Nagisa. It’s nice finally knowing you.”

And so the assassin walked up the stairs and pushed open the doors, but then he remembered something and stopped for a second.

”You can do it.” He threw to Midoriya over his shoulder. “Good luck.”

* * * * *  
  


Inside the auditorium, dozens of students chatted amongst each other. Everyone’s wavelengths were buzzing with various degrees of excitement and anxiousness. It made Nagisa feel a little disoriented, all these people talking at once and filling his head with their conscious thought. All of them echoed loudly in his head, their voices blending together to create a faint warble of chatter.

Some students he glanced at were none too worried at all. Like the boy he sat next to, a tall, well built guy with navy blue hair and rectangular glasses. He sat diligently in his chair, back ramrod straight and eyes forward. His wavelength was fast but steady, and his heartbeat average. Most likely, he’s one of those straight laced, swift minded teacher’s pet types, similar to the A-Class students he’d often get held up by on his way to school. The thought made him a bit uncomfortable, being that he sat right next to this kid, but he put it aside.

The written portion of the exam was an unbelievably stressful event. Not because Nagisa was afraid of the answers being wrong, but because the wavelengths around him were incredibly distracting.

One of the main reasons he avoids being in crowds or going to large gatherings is because he can’t turn off his sensory abilities. Everyone’s emotions run high in these types of situations. His classmates from last year all learned how to be calm during a test (“Mental fortitude is the first step to success!”), so normally he had little trouble focusing on his own work.

But the wavelengths pouring into his head at a mile a minute rate made it impossible to get anything done. Everyone’s brains were in overdrive, either going at a blinding speed while trying to remember whatever they studied, or short circuiting as they failed to recall their knowledge. All of them were under some degree of stress, and it was infectious.

Nagisa is suffocating, drowning in a stormy sea, the waves thrashing violently and throwing him against rocks. He grits his teeth and blinks the colored lines away from his vision, concentrating on the paper in front of him. He can barely even read the questions.

 _Block it out_ , he reminds himself.

Sweat beads on his forehead. He can feel a migraine start to build up, and leans over his paper to block out the noise that only he can hear, sounds like a computer processing information and heart monitor beeps. His own heart thunders, and he tightens his grip on his pencil so tightly it causes his fingers to tremble.

The questions are familiar, but he has trouble just writing the answer. At this point he’s less worried about his score and more worried about finishing in time. He inhales deeply, trying to settle his shallow breathing before he passes out or something. Imagine fainting during the _written_ portion of the exam. He’d never be able to show his face here.

An hour later, he’s managed to make it to the end of the test without breaking down, and finishes seconds before his time is up. He drops his pencil and closes his eyes, waiting for the cacophony to stop.

And stop it does, thank god. The whole auditorium explodes in relief, like someone released a pressure valve. Nagisa sits back in his seat, letting the new calm wash over him. His heart slows down considerably.

It’s too bad that there was no assassination involved. When he had his bloodlust switched on, everything else faded into the background, becoming nothing more than white noise. There was just him and the target, and whatever else he may have or need to carry out the hit. But it’s probably not a good idea to let his killer’s instinct run wild during a simple test.

He’s _fairly_ certain he didn’t fail, but then again he didn’t know what it felt like to think you did good on a test. At least if he gets a high enough score on the practical, they may ignore his test score.

As he waited for his head to clear, there was sudden commotion up onstage. He glanced upwards to see what it was. A man stood at the podium, scrawny and with spiky blonde hair and dark orange sunglasses.

He cheered into the microphone. “ _Heeey there, little listeners!_ ”

Nagisa felt the world explode.

That _voice_.

It couldn’t be.

No, no of course it couldn’t. This one was way different, louder and more explosive and just _different_. But it was so similar. So much.

A flaming hot dagger twisted in his heart. It hurt. It hurt so much.

He felt tears prickle his eyes. His breaths became quick again, his headache coming right back. Everything felt like a huge rush of thick, ice cold water slapping him and tossing him around. Thousands of emotions that he couldn’t identify pressed into his chest and mind.

Why now? Here of all places?

Dammit.

No.

Not now. Not today. Focus.

In an instant, his mind goes on lockdown and his head clears. Instincts take over his body. He tunes out everything that’s not important, instead concentrating on the goal ahead of him.

This is a mission. He can’t screw up.

His brain filters in the knowledge he will need. The information output is slow but steady, enough for him to make base assumptions and think up a strategy. Shoving down his emotions is like trying to smother a wildfire, but he does it anyway until it’s nothing but smoke and ash.

_Gather intel on your opponent._

Right now, he’s dealing with three types of robots. That... is troublesome. His fighting style, if you can even call it that, is based off deceiving the naked eye, tricking the brain, crafting illusions. It all relies on his opponent, and whatever advantages they’ll give him. It’s not a style based on combat, but... well, assassination. Robots have no brain, no mind of their own, only wiring and hardcode.

Except for one certain magenta haired android girl.

He shakes his head clear of the thought.

The first type is a sort of humanoid-shaped drone that rolls around on one wheel and bashes people with shields on its arms (already he could see the places that lacked structural integrity), the second was a bug-like creature with spidery legs, a snake shaped head, and a scorpion tail (little defense, it’s bound to have too many weak points), and the last is a sort of tank with mounted machine guns, the chambers big enough for him to fit his arm in (this one has a lot of defense, but the eyes are obviously the weak point, large and red and way too protected). Respectively, they’re worth one, two, and three points. He noted that they all probably have an off switch somewhere.

So the plan is simple enough. Evasive maneuvers should work long enough for him to shut them off manually. If he gets spotted, he’ll have to use traps and such to take them out. The giant red eye shouldn’t be too hard to reach if it comes down to the wire. Though he has little to work with in means of attack power, he has several tricks up his sleeve to make up for it.

(Totally not illegal.)

"Excuse me!"

The boy that sat at his left suddenly shot up out of his chair with his hand in the air.

"There are four types of villains on the handout! With all due respect sir, if this is an error, then I expect better from the top hero school of the country!"

Nagisa suppressed the urge to sigh loudly. He honestly couldn't help but be reminded of the uppity, pretentious A-students that roamed around the main campus of Kunigigaoka. Those high handed elitists made up about ninety percent of the school, and although not all of them were so bad, the ones that fit the mold were had so much fun looking down on the residents of 3-E that they may as well have gotten a colonoscopy to remove the sticks up their asses.

But who knows? He could be wrong. This is, after all, a hero school. They probably take care to select the people with good attitudes.

"Moreover, what's with you?"

Never mind.

"You've been muttering this entire time. It's distracting. If you won't bother to take this seriously, then you can just leave."

Four Eyes had turned his attention to the small green haired boy that Nagisa had met at the front gate. Midoriya, who had been fidgeting restlessly in his seat and whispering to himself, yelped and quickly clamped a hand over his mouth. The rest of the students around him sniggered as the freckled kid shrank in embarrassment, face crimson from shame.

Nagisa felt his blood boil.

Midoriya was an anxious student about to take the test of his life. This boy, who gave Nagisa the distinct impression of a guy with permanently high marks in school, had no idea what the poor kid could possibly be going through. He had no right to criticize him so rudely. And everyone else just laughed at him! What kind of school is this?

_"I'm sorry, but if you're not serious about being a student here, then it'd be better if you just dropped out now._

_Oh please! Don't give me the whole 'divorcing parents' sob story. That shit isn't going to work on me, you worthless brat."_

_"Stupid as well as being quirkless? You really do have no hope."_

It was because he never stood up for himself, never said he wasn't fine, never tried harder to make himself heard. It was his own fault, really. But he could never shake the feeling of wanting somebody, anybody at all, to offer their hand when he needed it.

It wasn't fair.

"Sit down."

He said it without thinking. He couldn't help it.

"Excuse me?" Four Eyes spun around to face Nagisa, looking offended.

"You heard me," his voice was low and calm, "mind your manners and sit your ass down."

He wasn't sure if Four Eyes had gotten flustered or if he simply saw the look donning the face of the assassin, but he suddenly froze for a moment before dropping back into his seat, his body rigid with barely controlled frustration.

Present Mic answered Four Eye’s question like the exchange didn’t even happen. “Right you are, Examinee 7111!” He then proceeded to explain how the fourth robot was more of an obstacle and was worth absolutely nothing.

Still seething a little, Nagisa’s anger dissipated once he heard this. He’d have no problems here, he knew that much. Avoiding is something he’s good at (in more ways than one), so there should be no problems.

So it’s his equipment and his wits versus a bunch of killer machines.

He’s totally got this.

* * * * *

Nagisa could feel the adrenaline and nerves of the other exam takers surrounding him like a thick fog, but unlike the test where he had to sit still, he was able to block it out in favor of preparing himself for battle. It still felt a little suffocating though, so he looked around to see what he could glean from the others.

And of course, he instantly spotted that mop of green hair.

Naturally he looked seconds away from having a nervous breakdown; it was sort of jarring compared to the buzzing excitement of the rest of the test takers, even if their confidence was mostly masking similar anxiety.

He decided to give Midoriya a wish of good luck—

—goddammit, not _him_ again. Present Mic called him by his exam number, 7111. Publicly humiliating a scared kid aside, he didn’t seem like a bad guy, just a little uptight. Still, he needs to learn not to be so presumptuous.

Case in point, “That girl is clearly trying to focus on the task at hand. Are you planning on disrupting her and ruining her chances?”

As Midoriya stammered a response, insisting that’s not what he meant to do, Nagisa walked up. The small boy said nothing, but he caught the eyes of 7111 and glared non-subtly.

”That’s enough. Leave him alone.”

Once again, 7111 looked somewhat perturbed. This time, however, he didn’t seem to care that he had been called out, and instead turned on the smallest boy with a look of condescension.

“And you!” He pointed with his whole arm rather than just one finger. “You could stand to be a less rude towards you fellow examinees!”

”Look at what you’re doing right now.” Nagisa argued back, jerking his head in Midoriya’s direction, “Being rude.”

”E-Excuse me?!” He sputtered.

”You’re excused.” Nagisa stopped glaring long enough to give the tall boy a calm smile. He just remembered that he can’t let his bloodlust leak out. Drawing any sort of suspicion is the _last_ thing he wants. “Just ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

7111 looked ready to blow a gasket, but before that could happen, there was a very sudden shout of _“GO!”_

Everyone stared at each other, gobsmacked.

_”What are you waiting for?! Real life heroes don’t get a countdown! Go, go, GO!!!”_

Abruptly the whole crowd surged forward. Nagisa was swept along for the ride, as was his green haired friend(?). As 7111 bolted through the crowd and pushed beyond them— were those engines on his _calves_?— the mini assassin made a mental note to himself to find out this guy’s name. Diligent and rule abiding, he could prove to be a huge threat if he were to start digging into the secret of the assassination business.

He split off from the crowd and took a sharp turn down another street.

* * * * *  
  


Shouta Aizawa always loathed anomalies.

Surprises aren’t a favorite of his, at least when he’s favoring something else happening. Surprise parties, for example. Regular parties are bad enough, but add in the factor of the unexpected and you better pray he doesn’t strangle you with his scarf very slowly and painfully. And yes, he’s done that once before.

Which is why he can’t understand why on god’s green earth he’s watching the screen with such... fascination? No, that’s not the right word. Things are fascinating when they’re _just_ unknown. What he’s feeling right now can best be described as _enthrallment_.

He can see All Might out of the corner of his eye staring at a different monitor with a near equal amount of vigor. Technically, they’re supposed to be watching all the students, but there’s more than enough teachers to go around and playback footage to review later, so no harm no foul.

He can’t bring himself to take his eyes away from this particular screen anyway.

 **Nagisa Shiota** it said.

 **Quirkless** it said.

How can he do all _that_ and be quirkless?

The boy in question had put his backpack through a security check while he had been taking the written portion of the exam. It was necessary to make sure that none of the students had any items that would give them too much of an unfair advantage, or anything that would blow up the false city or something.

According to the principle, Nagisa’s book bag had nothing but various notes for studying, as well as a pair of cleated sneakers and some gym clothes. His backpack, on the other hand, may as well have been a full arsenal.

He had a sort of retractable sniper rifle tucked away and wrapped beneath a length of rope that was attached to a grappling hook. Several smaller guns lines the inside, including a dart gun. A stun gun, it’s shortened counterpart in the front pocket (a regular taser), and long, steel knives hidden in sheaths. Leather gloves with spikes on them. Smoke bombs. Nail bombs. A hatchet. Molotovs. A lighter.

Initially, they’d been planning on calling the damn _cops_. The kid might’ve been planning to blow up the school. However, Nedzu ended up stepping in for the boy, pointing out that a quirkless student likely had no other means of offense, and implored them to look a second time. It turned out that the guns were loaded with stun bullets, not real ones. The dart gun was actually a paintball gun, and the tasers were kept on a low setting. They also found out that each of the items were made by a weapons manufacturing company, Cyberpunk Industries. After all that, they were forced to conclude that since they were technically support items, the boy was allowed to bring them into the practical.

Shouta initially hadn’t been so willing to allow it. It was just laughable, how much that kid needed to get through. A full arsenal just to handle one test. He’d fail miserably in actual heroics, especially in situation where he couldn’t rely on his weapons. No way was he getting in.

That is, until Nedzu pointed out that Shouta had relied entirely on his capture tap scarf to get through the test when he first came to UA.

He was forced to concede. Damn that rat.

Looking at what was going on now, Shouta was almost glad that the principle had stepped in for the kid. Now, he got a front row seat to the destruction it was causing.

Shiota had split off from the others as soon as he got the chance. He was shockingly fast, even in consideration of his tiny, swift little body. Upon seeing the first robot, a two pointer, he whipped out a hunting knife and sprinted towards it with reckless abandon.

Shouta was about to facepalm, as were the rest of the staff, when suddenly they noticed that the boy did a full one eighty pivot and started running in the opposite direction entirely.

They soon found out why. Another robot, a three pointer, was barreling in their direction. Must’ve been chasing the kid down the street.

Shiota skidded to a complete stop, and waiting a second. Then another. The robots charged closer, both on a collision course and undoubtedly moments away from squashing him between themselves. Some of the teachers were ready to leap up from their chairs in anticipation at this point. 

Instead, Shiota leapt.

Specifically, he leapt onto the bulky body of the three pointer, planting his feet and pushing off. The two robots collided with one another, and the result was an explosion that shook the whole area. A mushroom cloud of fire bloomed from the source. Pieces of shrapnel and scraps of melted metal flew in all directions. One piece accidentally imbedded itself in the eye of a one pointer, who had instantly turned to face the cause of the sudden commotion, and it collapsed to the ground.

Shiota rolled into his shoulder and skidded against the pavement, wearing a look of vague contentment, one that was way too calm for someone in his shoes. In less than ten seconds, he already had six points.

The next robots he took down were a trio of one pointers, and it’s safe to say that none of the staff have ever seen such a strategy. The boy threw out a Molotov, letting the fire splash all over one of the robots. The remaining pair immediately went over to see what had happened, but for a brief second, Shiota disappeared.

As in, one minute he was there, the next not one of the cameras could find him. It was like he just stepped out of frame and failed to step back in.

The one pointers looked confused as well, spinning around searching.

Then...

_WHHHHHHhhhrrrrrrrrrr...._

One of them suddenly shut down.

That’s because the boy had been clinging to its back, his knife implanted like a nail in the thing’s head, and in that time he managed to find the off switch. Before the other robot could even react, Shiota sprang out and stabbed it, right in the eye. It fell to the ground, taking Shiota down too, and he did a dive roll to escape the ensuing crash.

This went on for a while. Through clever use of his equipment, surroundings, and the weaknesses of the robots, Shiota slowly but steadily racked up points. He set up traps, parkoured his way around the city, hid it plain sight until he could shut them off, and sometimes got them to destroy _each other_. It was a sight to behold, a student taking down his enemies through sheer cleverness.

But fighting wasn’t the only thing he did. At one point, one student, whom Shouta noticed All Might was watching rather intently and who had yet to use his quirk, was initially paralyzed by fear when an enemy rolled up to him, ready to crush him. **Izuku Midoriya** , his file said.

Just then, Shiota ran out from a hiding space and swiftly made his way to the green haired boy, who was slightly taller but mostly unimpressive.

Shiota put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and forced him to duck. At that moment, he vaulted himself over the taller one’s body, and slashed wildly. The robot stumbled back in surprise...

...right into a nail bomb.

Shiota had apparently thrown it out just second beforehand. Thankfully, he did it in such a way that the other test takers didn’t step on it. He threw it in the path of the robot, and when that failed, he merely forced it to detonate.

In the process, he earned quite a few rescue points.

It didn’t stop there. At another point, Shiota used his grappling hook to swing on a flagpole and pull a girl with orange hair and enlarging hands— **Itsuka Kendo** , apparently— out of the way of a careening robot that was about to topple on top of her, courtesy of **Tenya Iida** , who had kicked it hard enough to nearly send it flying. And then he saved another boy (Yuuga Aoyama) who had doubled over from pain at over usage of his quirk, by unloading bright, neon blue balls of paint into the three pointer’s sensors. Then he shoved Aoyama out of the way and used a taser to send the robot into a frenzied state of electrical misfire, long enough for Shiota to pull out a pistol and land a clean shot to its eye. And another time, he stole a broken off piece of armor from a three pointer and dived in front of an injured student, **Eijiro Kirishima** , who was taking a moment to rest and recover his quirk. The result was that the smaller boy’s palms and fingers got sliced up badly, but this didn’t even seem to faze him.

This went on until about halfway though the exam, where Shiota made his way up a tall building by _scaling with his knives_ , and then whipped out the rifle and then proceeded to unload his stun bullets into the eyes of the remaining robots, one by one, in quick succession. Some of the other students, who had a similar idea to his, couldn’t help but stare at the way he effortlessly took out each enemy with the accuracy of a trained sniper.

Actually, a lot of his movements looked too calculated to be from simple training. It had to be something more, and everyone knew it. Moving methodically across the city, taking out each enemy with deadly precision, he looked almost experienced. Less like he was fighting and more like he was _hunting_. Especially with those ambushes and the way he lied in wait, anticipating where each robot would be.

Then came the zero pointer.

Shiota’s first reaction was to run, like many of the other students. He jumped off the roof he was on, and landed on another one, and kept roof hopping like that for a while. But then he stopped in his tracks, glancing over his shoulder.

A girl with brown hair, **Ochako Uraraka** , was trapped, her leg stuck under a piece of rubble.

Immediately, he spun around to try and save her. He sprinted until he skidded to a stop right next to her, and grabbed her hand. Uraraka screamed in pain as he pulled her again and again, until he was finally able to yank her free.

Unfortunately, as soon as he told her to run, he tripped on a stray rock and fell to his knees. It seemed like up until this point, he’d been kept upright through adrenaline and sheer determination, but now he was starting to slow down. His messy, powder blue hair was stuck to his face with sweat, his body bruised and bloodied in various places. Uraraka, who hadn’t seemed to notice, hobbled away desperately, leaving the boy at the mercy of the giant robot the size of a skyscraper.

Only for Izuku Midoriya to fly past him, up at the giant center of the zero pointer. Even as his legs flopped uselessly behind him, somehow having gotten _broken_ by the force of the jump, he reeled back his fist, screamed something no one could really hear, and _obliterated_ the giant mech.

When he started falling, for some reason, All Might looked on the verge of panic.

But at the ground, Shiota was suddenly sprinting over to Uraraka. When he made it to her, he said something with an urgent look on his face; and in seconds the girl slapped his arm. The blue haired boy was made weightless in an instant.

Then he pulled out his rifle and began to shoot.

He shot at the ground below him, all while carefully avoiding other students; the kickback of each bullet fired pushed him through the air. He reloaded the clip in quick succession and kept shooting, until at last, he was in the right position.

Izuku Midoriya landed directly in his open left arm. Shiota hooked his arm under the boy’s broken body as the force of the fall dragged them both to the ground in quick succession. Shiota turned his gun directly downwards and fired another few shots, slowing their fall into a steadier descent.

They both collapsed to the ground, one of them sighing in relief, the other with a look of despair on his face as the horn sounded, marking the end of the exam.

Shouta Aizawa decided right then and there that this was something he would never forget.


	3. Scapegoat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still you’ve got so much to prove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> U.A., you’ve got a big storm comin’.
> 
> *snaps*

_Ow_.

It stung. He probably shouldn’t even be touching it.

_Ow..._

His mind was foggy. Nagisa pressed the wet cloth to his forehead. It came away stained crimson.

Maybe he should have realized that it wouldn’t be that easy. The exam was hard, really hard, and his stamina had been so thoroughly sapped that there was a rather large gap in his memory suggesting he may have blacked out once or twice. He almost certainly fell into a bit of a coma after the exam; all that excitement from the others had sort of nullified his exhaustion, and by the time he woke up (on the concrete) it was already sundown.

His wounds had mostly healed, probably thanks to that nurse, Recovery Girl. Aside from some leftover scrapes and bruises, his injuries were pretty much gone.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop any of his newer injuries. By that, he means the ones he got from his _mother’s_ wrath.

He probably should have expected this. Back when he shawshanked his hair off, she only held back from hurting him because he had a test literally hours away. She might’ve forgotten while he left that all was said and done, seeing his god awful hair again probably reignited her rage.

Upon walking in, she’d been there and looked at him in a way that scared him. Her eyes were like daggers and the way she bared her teeth looked less like a smile and more like a crocodile about to tear off a duck’s head.

She had a jug of water. A big one.

**Danger.**

”Welcome home, darling.” She said, her voice dripping honey and venom. “I hope you did well on your test.”

She didn’t, this he knew. But he nodded anyway. “I think I did okay...”

”I’ll bet you’re very dehydrated after all that exertion. You should drink some water, sweetheart.”

**Danger.**

She held out the jug, the water inside of it sloshing menacingly. It’s probably poisoned or drugged. She’s done it before, after all. Putting fluids in his system to mess with his growth, or to make sure he was too sedated to fight back. He wanted to slap the jug away.

Feeling very much like someone being handed a gun to shoot themselves with, he took the container from her hands. It was heavy, so he held it with both hands.

When she stared at him with expectant eyes, he sighed and put his lips to the rim. Cold liquid filled his mouth and slid down his dry throat; the weakness in his legs dissolved a little.

A few seconds passed, and...

...nothing?

Really? No poison, no drugs, no anything at all?

Emboldened, he took another tentative sip. It tasted so good. Too good, like heaven in liquid form. He truly hadn’t noticed just how thirsty he was after all that running around. He greedily gulped as much as his stomach could hold, until it became hard to continue swallowing. By the time he was finished, almost a fourth of the jug was gone.

He wiped his mouth and held the jug out for her. “Thank you, Mother.”

She continued to ‘smile’ and reached out. But instead of taking the water back, she merely pushed it back to him.

“Don’t be shy, sweetie. Drink as much as you want.”

Nagisa stared at her.

She stared back.

Her eyes were like swirling black pits. A shadow loomed over them, threatening to swallow her face in darkness.

His hands shook when he took the water and began drinking again. Instantly, his gut felt heavy, tightening as if to tell him to stop already, and he wanted to, he _wanted_ to, but he just _couldn’t_.

Finally, he couldn’t hold any more. He suddenly choked and stopped, throat stinging as he sputtered and spat out the liquid. Dizziness began to set in as he desperately tried to get air to enter his lungs and he wheezed tiredly and why won’t anyone come and _help_ him?

Just as he was about to try and hand the jug back to his mother, she planted her hand on the bottom and held it there. Forced to keep the bottle in place, he tightened his lips and clenched his teeth so no liquid could pass through.

”Drink, honey. Drink every last drop.”

 _No_.

She gave a shove, and Nagisa gagged as more fluid seeped into his mouth... oh god, everything hurts. His stomach hurts and his head hurts and his chest and throat hurts and so many other things that shouldn’t be hurting are hurting—

Defiantly, he chugged the whole thing as fast as he could. Horrible, it felt horrible. It bubbled inside of him and made him feel cold like ice.

No, it’s not the water that’s making him feel cold.

It’s her.

* * * * *  
  


After throwing up twice and sobbing like a toddler for an hour, he managed to drain all the excess H2O out of his system. The first time he puked, Mom whipped him with the wet cloth he was currently using. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood in various places. The ones on his back he couldn’t do much about himself, so she begrudgingly cleaned and dressed them herself before leaving him to his own devices while she calmed down.

It stung like crazy, but he could handle it just fine. Not the worst thing he’s ever gotten from her, really.

Except now, three days later, the wound on his forehead had reopened and now he was sure it was going to leave a bad scar.

Sighing, he sat up dizzily and reapplied the gauze slowly. It looked worse than it actually was; far from being all that deep, it ran from his left brow to his hairline in an awkward upwards curve that looked like a claw mark. No bandaid was long enough to cover the whole thing, so he wrapped a gauze underneath a bandage around his head like he was a head trauma patient. He’s _fairly certain_ he’s not concussed, but the pounding headache that has yet to go away after nearly forty eight hours would beg to differ.

Everything was blurred, like a watercolor painting left in the rain. His bathroom spun around him as he weakly stood up, legs shaking. God, he is _so_ tired. Please don’t let him be sick or something.

”Nagisa, darling!”

He jumped, dropping the bandage.

No.

”Where are you~?”

Please, not again.

His heart was close to bursting out of his chest. He might throw up again. Please, no— Dammit, please, please, please.

”I have something for you, sweetie!”

Oh shit, he’s going to throw up.

Somehow, he swallows it down. No, it’s not what he thinks, he’s sure of it. Maybe he’s just overreacting? Yeah, that’s it. It’s possible she just wants him to take out the trash, or found something old of his that used to belong to him, like his favorite childhood toy or a lost Sherlock book, or...

Or another dress.

He grips the door handle tightly, and steps out of the bathroom— only to find Mom’s face inches from his own as he pulls the door open. He startled and quickly backs up, unsure of where this is going and not at all wanting to find out. A small part of him in his head, a part that’s connected to his assassin side, mechanically scans the room for escape routes and possible weapons, before he stomps it down.

Mom’s eyes are bright, not crazy today, her brain waves normal. She’s holding something behind her back so that he can’t see. Please, god, don’t let it be another dress. He can’t take any more of it.

”W-What is it... I mean, yes Mother?” He asks tentatively.

She doesn’t drop her smile, which is good, for now. Based on the way she’s standing, she seems genuinely content. That could change at the drop of a hat though, he’s well aware.

After what feels like hours of suffocating in anticipation and dread, finally, his mother stops hiding the object behind his back, and he holds his breath as she extends it to him.

It’s an envelope.

Nagisa nearly wept in relief.

Giving her a quick thanks, he takes the letter from her hands, gripping it tightly like it’s his lifeline. Thank Jesus it’s not a dress. The seal on the paper is waxy and blood red. It’s quite heavy though, and there’s something flat and circular lying on the inside. Weird.

She wants to watch the results with him, but he’s afraid she might read about something she shouldn’t, something that might look suspicious. It takes a little convincing, but he manages to get her to leave him alone by playing to her biggest weakness.

”I promise to tell you the results.” He had told her.

Rather than using the standard “boku” when he spoke about himself, a boy, he ended up saying “watashi”, which is more often than not used for girls. A little appeal to her desire for a daughter that never got fulfilled, and she softens right up like cookie dough under a blowtorch.

Sure enough, she quickly shut up and allowed him some space, though under the conditions that she get to read the letter after he did. He quickly agreed and hastily made his way into his room, the sound of the door slamming shut behind him no louder than his own breathing.

Nagisa’s fairly certain that if he hadn’t made it to his desk chair when he did, his knees would have given out. His whole body was numb from the sheer repose of making it out of that situation with his head intact.

He thought he’d long stopped being so afraid of her. Key word being _thought_ , because obviously that wasn’t the case at all. He still startles when she calls his name, cowers when she raises her voice. Even outside the house, sudden sounds always make him flinch, and he still plays his stupid game with reading people just because he can’t afford to break that habit.

Goddammit. He’s always going to be afraid, isn’t he? How stupid is that? He took down a government official, stood his ground against the world’s greatest assassin, and from there, he proceeded to lay waste to dozens of incredibly powerful and dangerous men and women across Japan. Yet it was _his own damn mother_ that he couldn’t stand up to. The person that raised him is the one thing he can’t bear to face.

What a fucking joke.

He weighs the letter in his hand. It’s still got that weird, solid disc thing inside it. It doesn’t _feel_ like a bomb, though a small part of him doesn’t care all that badly even if it is. The blankness of the envelope seems to mock him, along with the scarlet seal.

He peels it open.

Indeed, there’s some sort of tiny, digital device lying on top of what looks like his letter, silver and gray and suspicious all over. There’s a small, blinking light right in the center that reminds him of a UFO or something. It almost looks foreboding.

Confused, Nagisa sets it down on the desk.

Within a few seconds, the center blinks red a few times, flashing incessantly, and then a _beam_ of some sort of white light pours out of it, extending up to the wall in a pyramid shape. Square in the middle of where the light ended up being cast is an image. No, not an image, a video. Is this a holographic projector? It has to be, or the image in front of him wouldn’t be translucent and moving around—

_”HAHA! I am here, as a projector!”_

—Jesus Christ! His heart nearly jumped out of his chest!

On the screen being projected onto the wall, a behemoth of a man had his face right in the camera, with the biggest, widest, and creepiest smile Nagisa had ever seen. Not even Korosensei held a candle to this giant. At least his teacher was otherwise so silly looking that his emoji face of a grin didn’t come across as unnerving. _This_ guy’s face, on the other hand, was about 35% teeth, and the rest had the honor of looking so strained that it was almost laughable how utterly fake it obviously was.

What’s All Might doing here? Isn’t this a video about his test results for UA? So why is the Symbol of Peace of all people showing up in his message? It doesn’t make sense.

”I know what you are thinking: why is All Might in my result video?” Among other things, yes. “Well, Young Shiota, you’re looking at the newest faculty member of UA Academy!”

_Hol up._

”I know, crazy, right?”

No.

No, he can’t have that. The Symbol of Peace in the same school as Nagisa, the professional assassin. The was a recipe for disaster; two cups of chaos, one pint of catastrophe, and a tablespoon of a death wish.

Collecting information on the heroes and students of the school was supposed to be... not easy, per se, but not this hard. A new development like this should have been sent directly to Nagisa. After all, many assassins are sent near frequent updates on their targets before going on their mission. Any change whatsoever could prove to be fatal. Outliers are too dangerous to be ignored. Shifts in their schedule, unforeseen circumstances, any little thing that could affect the hit, they were always made aware. But a curveball this extreme... he should have been informed! So why wasn’t he?

Could it be because of the nature of his mission? ‘Collect intel’, they told him. Such a vague objective, now that he thought about it. What kind of intel could they possibly want? Information on the quirks of the students and teachers? A rundown of any weak points in security? Do they just want him to sniff things out, or will he have to find something in particular? It made no sense, why now of all times they wouldn’t tell him anything about—

—about the target.

Then it hit him. He didn’t _have_ a target.

He was to spy, not kill. Thinking about it, it seemed obvious. Of course they wouldn’t tell him, they don’t even know when stuff like this happens! That’s pretty much the whole reason he’s being tossed into this like a mongrel being dropped into a dog fighting ring. They had nothing to give him, that’s his job to figure out. He is their test run, the ‘demo’ of infiltration missions. A man on the inside.

In all the rest of his missions, Nagisa had informants that would usually make him aware of any possible setbacks by their own means. In this situation, however, he _is_ the informant.

In other words, he’s going into this whole thing blind as a bat.

All Might at last stepped away from the camera, drawing himself up to full height and _wow, that has to be at least seven foot two._ “Let’s cut to the chase; I am pleased to say, Young Shiota, that you managed to pass your written exam!”

Thank god. He hoped that he would at least do good on his written test, but he hadn’t been so sure after the way he had a near breakdown halfway through. After all, most of the material was stuff he had learned about with Korosensei. Had he failed _there_ , he’d have disgraced the one person he wanted to make proud...

“Several of the teachers noted that you looked rather, for a lack of a better term, astoundingly stressed during this part of the test. They also noted that you didn’t seem to be able to focus whatsoever. The mere fact that you kept your wits about you even while you were overcome with such anxiety... that, my boy, is the mark of a true hero!”

Really? He wouldn’t thought that being so distressed during the easier part of the exam would’ve cost him some points, not earned them.

Well, one good thing came from it. If he did worse than he normally would, then he has less of a chance standing out in a proverbial crowd. Better to shoulder the burden of being “ignorant” than let all those around him know what he really is. He never thought he’d see the day where he’d be _happy_ to have low grades, and yet here he is.

All Might continued. “Let’s move on to the practical exam. Young Shiota, I am pleased to say that you seriously shocked the observers with that display of speed and intellect. You are certainly something special, indeed.”

Crap. He hadn’t meant for that. He was so used to being overlooked throughout his life that he didn’t see the need to use any different sort of method to trash the enemies. More or less, he figured that the other examinees would get more attention than he would, thanks to all of them having flashy quirks and training. He’d gone a little wild without thinking.

Well, even so, it was still salvageable. It’s not like he stood out too terribly. He just needs to be more cautious.

”You managed to gain forty villain points on you own. I have to say, that is most impressive for someone of your caliber!”

‘For someone of your caliber’? Ah, he must mean quirkless.

”To think, a quirkless boy stepping up to be a hero. Truth be told, I would have thought it impossible, once upon a time. After all, it’s tough in the hero business!”

Yep, he knew this would happen. Adults think that saying things like how he’s so smart and reliable, and how impressive it is for someone like him. And only barely managing to leave out the “...for a quirkless boy” part. In the end, it’s all nothing more than misguided pity and condescension, dressed up in pretty little compliments and wrapped up in false kindness.

No matter. It’s not like he cares anymore.

”I’m sure that you’ll do a great job, my boy, despite any setbacks you may have along the way.”

...He doesn’t care _at all_.

”I am proud to say that all on your lonesome, you managed to wrack up forty villain points! Not the highest score, of course, but enough for you to pass the test! Congratulations!”

Forty, huh? That’s a good number. Enough not to fail, but nowhere near the top. Just as it should be, right? A kid like him would naturally be near the bottom of the pack, and his score reflects that.

”But wait, there’s more! There were other factors in play, after all!”

...

...Wait, what?

”What kind of school would this be if we turned away those who helped others!”

Hang on.

All of a sudden, the screen flickered. A couple of seconds of static was followed by what looked like surveillance footage. Immediately, Nagisa recognized the buildings and streets, but more than that, he recognized the debris scattered on the ground. The testing grounds.

All Might’s voiceover permeated through the lack of back noise. ”Despite the risks to yourself, you went out of your way to save other examinees and help them out while you were in the midst of a test yourself!”

One by one, different clips within the same timeframe popped up. Each one was of Nagisa himself, and each time he appeared onscreen, he was helping out. Most of which, he could barely remember at all. He vaguely recalled protecting Midoriya from a one point robot, but past that point, honestly, it was all kind of a blur. He surmised that his blackout period was probably the result of an adrenaline high, since while he doesn’t remember any of the specifics, he does remember being far more clear headed and focused than he’d felt in a long time.

But what did saving other test takers have to do with his own score? Initially, Nagisa had assumed that rescuing the other examinees would give him some sort of extra credit. Maybe they’d take him anyway regardless of his score. To be frank, it was a bit of a coin toss, and he decided to just trust his instincts.

He’s not surprised that his instincts went ahead and betrayed him.

Okay, so _maybe_ he looked out across the battlefield and saw the faces of his old classmates from last year, depending on him to watch their back, and bail them out if they ever needed it. Maybe he took longer than he should have to realize that he was taking a test, not playing a training game with Karma and Sugino and his other best friends. Maybe the idea of watching someone die again made him feel nauseated.

Maybe he was tired of _taking_ lives, and decided to try _saving_ them.

”The examiners counted ten rescues. A splendid job, if I do say so myself! You even went out of your way to save the same person twice, isn’t that right? And as a result, you’ve gained exactly sixty Rescue Points!”

W-Wait, hold on—!

”Not only does this mean you’ve easily surpassed our expectations, but I’m very proud to say that you, Young Shiota, are this year’s first place, with a top score of one hundred points!”

No, no, no, no, no, this is all wrong!

”My dear boy... welcome to your hero academia!”

There was a heavy whirring sound, like when a computer shuts down, and the projector’s light faded and died as the device turned itself off. The screen disappeared, and there was nothing left but still silence.

Nagisa couldn’t bring himself to do or say anything. He kind of wanted to scream or something, but that was too far out of his reach. Instead he sat perfectly still. His chest felt hollow and empty, like how you would feel after you just got done crying for hours and you’ve exhausted all your emotions. Yeah, that’s accurate. He knew he should be feeling something, yet at the same time, was too tired to feel at all.

Don’t stand out. Blend into the crowd. Hide yourself in plain sight. Use others as your camouflage. Don’t kick up the dust. Keep your head down.

Don’t stand out.

Don’t stand out.

_“You are this year’s first place!”_

Why? All his years in middle school being bullied, ignored, swept under the rug, he wanted nothing more than for someone to notice him. For a chance to be given to him to prove himself, prove that he was valuable, he was more than just some background character.

Karma gave him that, for a little while. But in the end, it led to disappointment. Even today, he’s not sure why Karma gave him a chance, only to decide that it wasn’t worth it. Obviously the redheaded boy wasn’t fond of Nagisa’s quirklessness as a whole, or maybe just didn’t see him as all that remarkable. But if that was the case, then why would he reach out in the first place? Either way, he’d been so hurt when he lost his chance to stand out from the crowd.

Then he became an assassin, and he realized just how much of an asset this was. Nobody notices him, nobody gives him a second glance. And because of that, he can get in close, nobody looking his way, and go in for the kill. Once it’s done, he blends into the mob, leaving everyone else tripping over themselves in confusion.

But now, he just lost his greatest asset. He’s this year’s top scorer. He’s no longer ordinary, or part of the back wall. He’s _special_ now.

His last defense. _Gone_.

He pulled out his phone, hands trembling for no discernible reason, and sent out a text in a group chat.

**Nagisa:** Hey, guys. I’m so sorry about not being in contact recently. I’ve been really busy, and I guess I neglected to check in. But that’s all gonna change, starting right now. My new school is gonna take up a lot of my focus, but it won’t come before you guys.

He waited a few seconds, then before anyone had a chance to respond, typed in another message.

**Nagisa:** I missed you.

Not even a moment after he clicked off his phone, there was a notification. Then two. Then four. Then three more, then five more, then eight more...

He turned his phone back on and quickly scrolled through the messages.

**Karma:** He lives!

**Sugino:** At long last!

**Kayano:** Hi, Nagisa! Glad to see you’re doing okay.

**Karma:** Finally decided to come out of hibernation?

**Kayano:** Ikr, it’s been like years

**Sugino:** I don’t think it’s been THAT long

**Kataoka:** Some of us have been a little worried. We’re happy to know that you’re alright. Also, don’t worry about being too busy, we completely understand.

  
**Isogai:** Don’t worry about it, man. Life happens, and sometimes we have those periods in time where we can’t always socialize. Don’t neglect your schoolwork in favor of us, though!

**Yada:** Aww, we missed you too, Nagi!

**Terasaka:** About damn time you said something, we all thought you died

**Kayano:** Terasaka!

**Hazama:** Even if he did die, I could just perform a seance.

**Yada:** plz don’t

**Hazama:** >:)

**Maehara:** Dude, I’m so glad to hear from you!

**Itona:** Indeed. It’s been far too long.

**Nakamura:** Don’t think you can avoid me, Nagisa! I’ll hunt you down!

**Okuda:** Hi, Nagisa! It’s so relieving to hear from you!

**Kanzaki:** Yes, it is!

**Kayano:** :D

**Nakamura:** See, the girls are all over you and all you did was show up.

**Kayano:** Omg no-

**Maehara:** Lucky

**Kayano:** SHUT UP

**Karma:** ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

**Kayano:** Karma I swear-

**Sugino:** Let’s not fight, guys!

Nagisa felt his whole world tilt on its side a little, but not in a bad way. Once again, his hands were trembling for reasons he couldn’t understand. A warm sort of feeling bloomed in his heart, filling the gap that had been left by the acceptance letter. The void disappeared, and left in its wake was a flurry of embers, warm and lighting him up from the inside out.

There was a tightness in his chest and throat, and since he was alone at the moment, he didn’t mind letting the tears fall as he shakily began typing in more messages about recent events to his beloved friends, his family, his comrades.

* * * * *

Izuku nervously peered up at the door to his new classroom, which reached all the way up to the ceiling, it was so tall. He supposed that someone with a certain type of quirk would probably need a big doorway to get through. “ **1-A** ” was printed on it in huge, bold red letters.

Despite everything he went through just to get to this point, he almost didn’t want to step foot in the room. His mind flashed to Kacchan, who would certainly waste no time singling him out, and that strict boy from the entrance exams that made him look like a fool in front of all those people. Not that he needed anyone’s help to look like a fool, but still!

Then he remembered the aqua haired girl from the exam, the one that he saw again and again on the beach, and the brunette one with the cutesy face. The two that saved his life as he was free falling. He still wasn’t sure what the blue haired one did exactly, the pain made him a little unaware of his surroundings, but he was faintly aware that she was under the effects of the brunette’s quirk. Maybe they could be in his class too.

As for Kacchan and that other kid, maybe they’re not in his class! Yeah, the could be in Class 1-B instead—

“Take your feet off of that desk now!”

” _Huh_?”

Izuku kicked himself mentally.

”It’s the first day, and you’re already disrespecting this academy by scuffing school property, you cretin!”

”You're kidding me, right? Did your old school put a stick up your ass, or were you born with it?”

Just as Izuku was debating whether or not he should run away while he still had the chance, he took a step backwards and nearly bowled someone over.

Luckily the person was able to sidestep in time to dodge him, and they positioned themselves so they were standing right beside him.

”Ah—! U-Um, I’m s-sorry, I-I didn’t mean to—!”

”It’s fine.” They reassured him, and Izuku paused.

It was her.

She still had the same, somewhat jagged haircut from when they last saw each other, the one that made him wonder if she did it herself. Still, it looked as silky and fine as ever, falling over her eyes which were of a similar color. Her smile was mild but cute, pale cheeks tinted with rose. She only stood about an inch or so below him, but was so wispy and fragile looking that he wondered how on earth she manages to do all that crazy stuff in the exam...

”...doriya-kun? Midoriya-kun?”

Crap, he’s staring at her!

He ignored the way his face was heating up. ”S-Sorry, I d-didn’t mean t-to, I-I swear, I just... I didn’t see you there!” God, he’s such a stuttering mess! Why can’t he properly talk to girls?

The girl made a small sound that was somewhere between a dry laugh and an amused sigh. “It’s fine, really. It happens more often than I’d like to admit.”

”O-Oh. Still, sorry about that...” Damn, he already forgot her surname! Even though he distinctly remembers her given name, Nagisa! He can’t call her that right off the bat, but if he asks after she already gave it, she might think he’s forgotten it on purpose and is ungrateful or rude—

She gave him a pitying look. “It’s Shiota.”

Izuku sputtered. How did she know?!

”I prefer to be called Nagisa though.” She smiled a little wider, and a small glint of mischievousness sparked in her eyes. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t use a quirk to read your mind or something; I just have... good intuition.”

Izuku was pondering where he heard that phrase before, when suddenly he heard a pair of rather loud footsteps make their way over to the two of them. He almost flinched. It was that scary guy!

He looked over at Shiota— no, Nagisa (holy crap he’s mentally calling a girl by her given name), remembering the last couple of times the two of them had encountered the glasses boy. He recalls feeling a strange emotion when she stood up for him, twice, without anyone prompting her. Never once in his life has anyone done something so nice for him. And maybe that’s why the emotion was so hard to pinpoint at first, but it didn’t take him long for him to know that it was thankfulness.

Though right now, he was less thankful and more concerned with Nagisa going on the defensive again. She didn’t seem like an aggressive person, but he knew firsthand that she can be _scary_ when she wants to be. He shuddered at the memory of her coldly forcing the glasses boy to sit down with nothing more than a command. Despite her seemingly quiet demeanor, there had been a forcefulness in her voice that sounded both natural and unnatural.

Right now though, Nagisa seemed to be keeping her face carefully neutral, the brightness in her face never leaving her features. Izuku couldn’t tell if she’d forgiven the boy in front of them or if she was just being polite, but nonetheless she kept silent as they were approached.

“Hello!” Oh wow, he’s tall. “My name is Tenya Iida! I am from Soma Private Academy! It is very nice to make both of your acquaintances!”

He bowed in such a way that his body was at a perfect ninety degree angle, his glasses nearly falling off.

”Likewise.” Nagisa responded curtly. She bit her lip, looking away a bit shyly. “I apologize about the exam...”

“No, it is I who should be apologizing!” Announced Iida, who abruptly began making swift chopping noises with his hands. “You two saw something else to the exam, correct?”

Izuku frowned, his face still a bit red. “I, uh...”

”I did not see until the test was over. You two... truly, you are the better men!”

“...men?” Izuku looked over at Nagisa, bemused. Nagisa had a similar look on her face.

Iida backtracked. “Oh, sorry! Man and... woman?”

And suddenly, the bluenette’s face faded into a deep scarlet. She struggled to speak for a few seconds, yet at the same time attempted an awkward smile.

”No, you were right before. I’m a boy.”

...Huh?

Pretty much the whole class, who’d been drawn to the conversation at the front, let out reactions that were varying degrees of surprised. Some of them looked outright shocked, like a girl at the front that was... entirely pink, for some reason, and the boy next to her who let out an exaggerated gasp. A couple of them looked a little apologetic and guilty, like the pretty dark haired girl sitting at the back. One guy in particular, a blonde kid with a dark streak in his hair, shouted “Dammit!” and slammed his fist on his desk. Even Kacchan—

Nope, Kacchan quickly began to glare daggers at Izuku again.

Wait a minute, he thought she— _he_ was a girl this entire time! Unbelievable, he actually made such a humiliating mistake?! Oh god, Nagisa must be feeling so awkward and embarrassed, he has to do something!

”I-I’m _so_ sorry!” Izuku bowed his head as deeply as he could. As did Iida, who once again did a perfect ninety degrees. “I should have known better than that, I just thought you were a girl— n-not that I’m calling you girly or anything! I just—“

”No it’s fine.” Said the blue haired boy. “Once again it... happens more than I’d like to admit.”

Izuku noted the strange, unidentifiable mix of emotions swirling around in those ocean eyes. Eyes that seemed to hold way too many secrets, secrets never to be revealed to the world.

”Hey, it’s you two!”

They both turned around to face the doorway. Sure enough, a girl (at least Izuku hoped this one was _actually_ a girl) with neck length brown hair and bright eyes came bounding into the classroom, and Izuku nearly resisted the urge to give himself a scolding smack on the head when he caught himself staring and taking note of how good she looked in a uniform.

”I can’t believe you guys are both gonna be in my class!” Ochako Uraraka, as he remembered, was jumping up and down excitedly and talking a mile a minute, the air around her thick with infectious enthusiasm. “Freckles Guy, that punch was totally amazing! I’ve never seen that much raw power before, it was like, ‘wow, what the heck?’ you know?”

T-Too close, she’s too close! Keep your mind out of the gutter, Izuku! “Agh, um, th-thanks, I guess...”

”And you too!” She rounded on Nagisa. “You were so fast and cool! I saw you zipping around the battlefield a few times and you were killing it! And thanks for helping me when you did, too!”

She got right up in Nagisa’s face as well, not at all seeming perturbed when he flinched and took a step backwards, his face dusted over in light pink. He seemed to be trying to thank her for all the compliments, but really couldn’t get a word in as she rambled on and on about his accomplishments during the exam. The girlish looking boy looked faintly like he wanted to run away, generally giving the impression that he wasn’t used to being spoken to by someone so lively, and Izuku felt incredible empathy for this kid.

”If you’re just here to make friends you can go home now.”

Izuku spun around to face the owner of whatever voice had just spoken, but he looked out into the hallway and saw no one at all.

Until he looked a little bit down and was forced to suppress a startled yell when he saw some sort of banana-caterpillar _thing_ resting at the foot of the classroom door, and it took him a few seconds too long to notice the scruffy, bleary-eyed face that was sticking out of one end.

What...?  
  


_Who is this guy?_ That was what he was wondering, because there was just no way this guy was... no, impossible, he couldn’t be...

”I’m your homeroom teacher, Mr. Aizawa.”

The man, Aizawa, took out a squeezable apple sauce packet and sucked on it.

 _“NO WAY!”_ The whole class seemed to think simultaneously.

Aizawa heaved himself upright and slowly unzipped his sleeping bag with a look of unbelievable impassiveness on his face as if someone had needed to drag him here, and honestly, it wouldn’t’ve been too surprising if that were the case.

He pulled out a cobalt-colored tracksuit with red and white markings designing it.

“Put these on.” He droned tiredly.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the class, who groused about the appropriate time to go out and do training when there was supposed to be an opening ceremony, the lone boy that had moved to the back of the class without anyone noticing was eyeing their new teacher and nervously chewing his lip, a worried frown lining his otherwise gentle countenance.

* * * * *  
  


Too bright. Today is _way_ too bright. But Shouta wasn’t at all focused on the sun, which was incessantly burning the skin that had paled from years of working at nighttime exclusively and never leaving his house otherwise— he’s not a shut-in, he’s antisocial— but rather, the two students that had most caught his attention during the entrance exam. And he very quickly found himself wondering which of them was going to be the resident Problem Child of the year.

When he first announced the physical exam, Shiota, unlike the rest of the class, had his lips pressed together in silent contemplation. Shouta initially assumed that his physicality didn’t support any sort of harsh straining, since most of what the Pro Hero saw in the practical exam were precision strikes and stealth-based sneak attacks. Then he had announced that they would be allowed to use their quirks, and while the rest of the class practically cheered like this was some sort of _game_ , Shiota was clenching his jaw and staring at the ground in a resigned manner, and it was then that Shouta realized that the boy had somehow guessed that this would be a test of _quirk_ strength rather than physical strength.

Honestly, Shouta wasn’t sure where to stand with the kid. He had a crazy amount of potential to be something, though that “something” had yet to be determined. A Hero, though? Impossible. His own quirk levels out the playing field and gives him a fighting chance, at the very least. But a quirkless boy will have basically no defense against any type of quirk, whether it be the type to affect a person physically or mentally. Skilled or not, he’s better suited for... well, he wasn’t sure exactly what Shiota’s skill set would be used for, but certainly not in any sort of Hero work.

The kid’s fighting style was probably the most vast issue Shouta would have to deal with if the boy went pro. When Shiota turned in his application which included a series of questions (some that were practical, some that were probably meant to be interpersonal, and many that were irrelevant), he described his hand to hand combat skills as “scrappy at best, bordering on sloppy”, his goal during a villain fight as being “immediate takedown” and the greatest asset in his style being “one shot, one kill”. In short, the boy was a stealth operator, much like Shouta, but didn’t have the necessary backup tricks like Shouta did with his martial arts training and capture tape.

Though in all fairness, the Hagakure girl was pretty much the same in that aspect, having a stealth based approach to heroics and being kind of frail for someone who managed to make it to the hero course. But well... to put it bluntly, at least Hagakure had a quirk to fall back on. But Shiota? Nothing. A glass cannon, only good for one use.

Speaking of which...

...There was also the issue of Izuku Midoriya. He reiterates: a glass cannon that’s only good for one use. Specifically, his quirk.

Not once in his whole career had Shouta ever seen a quirk work like that. Almost as if his body and his quirk had never been used in tandem before, which was odd, to say the least. But more than just being odd, it made the boy utterly useless in battle. He could, feasibly, handle himself in hand to hand as well, and fire off his quirk as a last result. But if he misses, or if it just plain doesn’t work, then he’s incapacitated, broken. In the end, Midoriya simply can’t be a hero if he’s only capable of being a liability.

Sorry boys, but some pills, no matter how painfully bitter, just have to be swallowed.

Between Shiota’s fragile build and the Midoriya boy’s volatile power, he fully expects either one of the problem children to come in last place, whether it be Shiota lagging behind in terms of where he should be physically (hell, even the Hagakure girl could probably beat him in an arm wrestling match) or Midoriya breaking his body halfway through the test.

What he didn’t except was what would happen after the rules were set in place.

”Anything goes. You may use your quirks.” He repeated to the class. And to his surprise, he saw Shiota actually light up at his words instead of withering like he did before. He saw a calculating look in the kid’s eyes, like he was piecing together a solution from scratch.

The first test was a fifty meter dash. As Shouta tallied down the scores, a small part of him couldn’t help but mourn the loss (the nonlethal sort of loss) of the unlucky bastard that was either one of the two kids who had put on such a show at the exams. Then Shiota’s turn actually came.

He was paired up with Midoriya, as irony would have it. It was almost poetic, in a way. He supposed that this was a good way to compare them with one another. Already he could see something similar about them, though he couldn’t tell what. Physically, they didn’t have much in common, aside from being rather short and unassuming, yet there was something there, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that made the sight of the two of them next to each other a bit of a challenge to look away from.

Shiota took a second to observe the trial in front of him, and promptly kicked off his shoes, much to the confusion of his companion. Right as the timer was about to settle on one, Shiota bent low to the ground, grasping the dirt between his delicate fingers.

When he took off, Shiota pushed off the ground with much more force than what could be reasonably expected. He dashed forward swiftly, his chest leaning forward so that he was practically bending over while he ran, his arms folded in as to reduce drag. When he skidded to a stop, he seemed to lose his footing, only to do a sudden roll on his side to avoid falling on his face.

His time said 6.24 seconds.

Anyone else would overlook this, because of course they would, it’s nothing when compared to his classmate Iida running fast enough to blur as he moved, or the next two, Yaoyorozu and Bakugou, who used their respective quirks to get some of the best times right below Iida. And yet he couldn’t help but notice it had been faster than his own time when he had taken a similar test in his years of high school, 6.37 seconds.

Midoriya, naturally, only ended up getting barely slightly above average. He was patted on the back by Shiota, which only marginally improved his mood as he sulked.

Something was off.

That much he could tell.

The next test was the grip strength. Shiota still hadn’t put his shoes back on, and Aizawa quickly found out why. No sooner than the test had started, the bluenette stuck his foot inside the area where one’s hand would go and positioned the bottom of the device against the wall. He held it in place with both hands and pulled, pushing his leg inwards towards the wall so that his foot pressed the lever down. The result was 56.1 kg.

Then was the sidestep test. The boy’s natural precision and speed won him an ideal score, even compared to the others that used their quirks. Thankfully, he put his shoes back on for this.

The long jump. This one, Shiota excelled at as well, gaining more height and distance than a person his size would be able to. But Shouta quickly caught on to the fact that it seemed like Shiota had done this before. Not that he’s done a long jump test before, but how he seemed way too accustomed to jumping long distances.

He didn’t ignore the nagging questions eating away at the back of his mind. Nor did he ignore the way Shiota seemed to be staring when he thought that his teacher wasn’t paying attention.

Then, it was the ball throw, and Midoriya was up once again. Shouta felt a little bad for the guy, who was so far out of his league at the moment that it just wasn’t fair. But it’s better to dash his dreams now than wait for it to happen down the line. He can’t ignore the inevitable.

”Midoriya’d better shape up or he’s going to be the one going home.” Iida lamented to Uraraka.

”Huh?” Oh god, the Bakugo kid again? Shouta can’t help but find the brat especially grating, specifically his voice and overall attitude problems. He has potential, of course, with a strong and versatile quirk, but his vulgar, boorish, and generally unpleasant personality is bound to hinder his progress.

Though what he says next, Shouta can’t help but take note of. “Of course he is, he’s a quirkless loser!”

That gets the attention of Shiota, though it’s nothing more than a side glance. He doesn’t look upset, just intrigued.

“Tell me,” he interrupts, his light voice low and calm, “is he a loser that happens to be quirkless, or a loser _because_ he’s quirkless?”

”What?” Bakugo rounds on the smaller boy. “Why the hell do you care?”

”Just wondering.”

”He shouldn’t be here!” Bakugo barked in response. Sparks began to fly from the blonde’s palms, as he’s all but snarling at this point. “He’s a goddamn useless nerd _without a power_! All he does is talk to himself like a creep and write in that stupid ass notebook he always carries around!”

The commotion was enough for Midoriya, who’d been locked in his own thoughts, to snap out of it and turn to watch out of concern. He was standing some meters away, but Bakugo’s lack of an indoor voice meant it wasn’t to hard to listen in to what was going on.

Shiota barely reacted to Bakugo getting up in his face. “I see.”

”The fuck do you mean, ‘I see”, you little shit? There’s nothing _to_ see! He’s nothing but quirkless, which means that he. Is. _Worthless!_ The fact is that he can’t—“

**BOOM.**

A shockwave of hot air washed over the area, catching everyone’s attention at once. Shouta turned on the spot, his blood running cold at the idea of what he thought just happened having happened.

But it wasn’t.

Rather than his whole arm being nothing but bruised skin and splintered bones, Midoriya was fine— save for the horribly swollen index finger he was nursing. It looked half destroyed, but it was only his finger.

Shouta’s eyes widened as he let himself break out into a grin.

“This kid...” he muttered, exhilarated.

Off to the side, Shiota made a comment of his own towards Bakugo, who was staring at Midoriya in wide eyes shock.

”Worthless, huh?”

* * * * *

Later, as Shouta was preparing the test results, he contemplated what to do about Shiota.

He’d managed to get fourteenth place on his, which was quite a fair amount better than expected. Midoriya, meanwhile, fell all the way to last, despite his obscene score on the ball throw. He might have gotten higher than Shiota, but the injured finger obviously hindered his strength, so he bombed the remaining tests.

But despite that, Shouta knew that the kid had incredible problem solving skill. Minimizing the damage while maximizing the power output. In spite of his other shortcomings, he could, theoretically, become a great hero.

Shiota, he was still unsure of. He didn’t quite end up near the bottom like he should have, but the fact remained that he has no quirk. He managed to rack up a good score during the practical, but the practical, Shouta knew, wasn’t a very accurate representation of a student’s potential. Some quirks are only effective against mindless enemies without a thought process, others don’t even work on machinery. As for the brat, he was quick on his feet, efficient, and brutal. A pragmatic fighting style, but not one that is suited for heroics, especially when the idea was to capture the villain alive, not kill them.

”Mr. Eraserhead.”

If if weren’t for years of practicing the ability not to give anything away on his face or in his body language, he probably would’ve tried to tackle the brat on sheer instinct.

He whipped around, coming face to face with a mildly surprised Shiota, who had separated from the others to come talk to him.

”S-Sorry sir.” He tucked a lock of hair behind his ear.

The teacher gaped. ”H-How did you know—“

”That you were Eraserhead?” 

Shouta nodded weakly, and the boy gave an airy, nervous chuckle. “It’s the scarf.” He pointed to the wrappings around his neck and shoulders, hanging off his frame rather loosely. “It’s obviously capture tape, and you’re best known for using that during battles as a weapon. Also... no one could really recognize you, even though you’re a Pro Hero that teaches at UA, so I figured you had to be underground or something.”

Okay, color him impressed, the pipsqueak actually has some deductive reasoning skills. It’s not enough to make up for his lack of a quirk, but with his brains, he could maybe be a detective or something.

He regained his composure. “What do you need, Shiota.”

”Nagisa.” The boy said, seemingly on reflex. “I prefer Nagisa.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Please.”

Shouta shook his head. “What is it?”

”I’m aware of the fact that you do not approve of me being at this school?”

The bluntness of the question floored Shouta almost completely, so much so that he nearly dropped the projector in his hand. “Why would you think that?” He asked sharply, even though he more or less knew the answer.

”Generally speaking, I’m used to people looking down on me. You’re not really the first, sir, and to be honest, I kind of doubt that you’ll be the last.”

Not once did Nagisa’s shy and tentative expression falter, as if he were politely asking to use the bathroom. It was bizarre, watching such a small, meek kid make such cutting statements like they were facts, and they probably were. None of his body language or anything else gave the impression of a boy who was intolerant of authority figures; he wasn’t meaning to be disrespectful, he was simply saying what needed to be said.

Shouta felt a sense of familiarity in those sky colored eyes. He decided that being direct with the boy was the best course of action.

”You have no way to defend yourself. I’m not sure where you picked up the tricks you did, but they’re not enough. You can’t be a hero with nothing but your wit, as much as I wish that were possible, and I genuinely do.”

”Do you know why Midoriya thought to use just his finger?” He asked mildly.

This question caused him to be caught off guard for a third time. “No.”

”...Well, when I was in the locker room with him,” Nagisa purged on with feeble but determined conviction. “I told him that he had the potential to become a great hero, but his broken body will be of use to no one. I mean,” he backtracked, “of course, I didn’t really phrase it like that, but I figured that you would say something similar. You know, minus the ‘great potential’ part.”

The Hero wanted to say something; he did, but he didn’t know what he could possibly say, so he didn’t.

”I knew someone as... for lack of a better term, _utilitarian_ as you would want to throw him out if he couldn’t prove himself.” He sharply sucked some air in through his teeth. “But if he could, if he ended up proving you wrong... well, then you’d be forced to look for someone else to make as a scapegoat. And the next best thing would be the quirkless kid, isn’t that right?”

Shouta was stunned, too stunned to register fully what had just been said. And then he did, and he felt even more stunned.

This kid had him figured out from the very beginning. He knew either himself or Midoriya would be singled out due to their performances on the practical exam. Specifically, Midoriya would be singled out for his obliteration of both the zero pointer and his own body, and Nagisa for coming in first despite being quirkless. Then he ascertained that one or the other would be locked down on as an example for the kids who weren’t going to take this seriously. But despite that, he’d still made sure Midoriya would have a chance of outperforming him in some way. All because he thought that his friend had the potential that Shouta had apparently missed.

He’d thought the brat was just as cocky as the rest of them. But no, far from it, he’s more than just perceptive, he’s practically clairvoyant. Clairvoyant... and selfless too.

Shouta determined that this kid cannot, should not, be thrown out. Because more than just being curious about him, the teacher wanted to know just who this boy was, and where he possibly could have come from.

Nagisa bowed his head apologetically and walked away to join his peers.

Once the result were announced, Shouta watched as Midoriya froze with shock and despair, his tiny friend wearing a similar expression for the same reason. The shorter of the two went over to provide some comfort, until they heard the next part:

”And I was lying; no one is going home.”

The class, of course, was baffled.

Shouta wasn’t able to stop himself from grinning like a madman. “That was just a rational deception to ensure that you gave it your all.”

He didn’t miss the way that Nagisa threw him an extremely dirty look out of the corner of his eye.

You know what? Why the hell not. One of Shouta’s favorite pass times is to give grief to some of the more uppity teens of his class.

“Why do you look so upset, Shiota? You had nothing to worry about, I’m sure, since you made first place on the practical exam.”

Those words worked like a magic spell. Everyone, literally everyone, snapped their heads towards the now flustered androgynous boy, some wearing the expressions of potential new fans, others seething with sudden jealousy, like the Bakugo kid, who’s disgruntled expression changed to one of sheer outrage, and the Todoroki boy, who glared coldly at the kid. And Nagisa could only shrink in on himself in discomfort and give a betrayed look to Shouta, who merely smirked triumphantly in response as the boy was mobbed.


	4. Baby Fawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take your shot, don’t act a fool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ableism warning.

“Go ahead and introduce yourself to the class, please.” Miss Yukimura encouraged him lightly.

It was his first day after being sent to E-Class, and he already seemed to be fading into the background. Not that it was surprising. Everyone seemed to skim him over, giving him an appraising look before ignoring him. Well, at least this’ll probably be not as bad as the teachers made it seem like. Though, that could change the second they learn about him.

“Hello. I am Nagisa Shiota. Nice to meet all of you.” He didn’t look anyone in the eyes, just kept his gaze on the back wall.

No one batted an eye.

That is, until a kid seated next to a large window nearby, dark blue eyes widening with recognition, shot up from his desk hard enough to knock his chair over.

”Oh, hey, I remember you, Nagisa-kun! You were in my English class, right? I only remember cause you were the best in that class!”

Nagisa jumped in surprise, not just at the boy’s loud voice, but because he wasn’t at all expecting anyone to know him. He knew who this strangely friendly boy was though. Tomohito Sugino, though he only knew because the guy had been a huge baseball star for the school team before getting swiftly booted out, and was also infamous throughout the school for being overly informal and personal, addressing people by their first names and such. Though at least Nagisa wouldn’t have to correct him about the naming thing like he did everyone else.

Half an hour later it was lunch, and a lot of people were starting to crowd him. They were keeping their distance out of respect, but they still surrounded him, and it made him more than a little uneasy, because he wasn’t used to this kind of thing and— won’t they just back off, please?! It’s like being surrounded by street thugs, except he couldn’t just run away without making things worse for himself.

Mostly though, he was dreading that one question.

”So what’s your quirk?”

Theeeere it is.

The boy who had asked was taller than him (as all people were) and had sort of orange-blonde hair. He seemed like another of the friendly types, but as Nagisa knew all too well, that’ll probably change at the drop of a hat.

”Um...” he wondered if there was a way to dodge the question.

The kid, Maehara he thought someone called him, only interrupted him. “Mine is just called Attach. I can stick two things together like glue, including myself and something else. It’s not much, but it lets me crawl on walls and stuff like Spider-Man! Cool, right?”

Nagisa let himself smile just a little bit, but even he could tell it looked incredibly fake. “Yeah, it’s really cool.”

“Mine’s Night Vision!” A pretty girl with a ponytail chirped from behind him. “But I have to wear sunglasses when I’m outside all the time, even when it’s cloudy, so it kinda sucks.”

He kept up his smile as all the people around him listed off their quirks, ending on a shy, bespectacled girl timidly stating that her quirk made her blood and saliva venomous like a “poisonous frog”. And finally, when the slightly European looking girl with strawberry blonde hair asked him what his was, he knew there was no getting around it.

”I...” he bit his lip, “I don’t have one.”

He kept his gaze on the ground, not wanting to look up and see their pitying gazes, their eyes filled with sorrow that was well meaning but also insulting. At the very least, he wanted someone to say something about him being pathetic or worthless or weird just so he didn’t have to deal with this. Honestly, he’d rather be ridiculed than pitied.

(He’d actually rather be _accepted_ than anything else.)

Someone in the back made a noise that sounded kind of like a laugh or a scoff, and he couldn’t stop his shoulders from falling a little, both out of disappointment and relief.

”H-Hey, that’s fine too! It’s totally cool!” Maehara laughed sheepishly.

Huh?

His head snapped up. He couldn’t help it, he thought he had misheard. He had to have misheard. It had to just be wishful thinking making him misinterpret things, right?

Sugino’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, and he flinched, but nothing else happened.

”You’re fine, dude. Promise.”

The same person in the back actually did laugh this time, and it was cold and ugly.

”Shut up Terasaka.” The blonde girl yelled at the perpetrator. “You’re quirk gives you alligator skin, so don’t laugh.”

”Fucking excuse me?!”

The newcomer of the class couldn’t speak for a while because his throat was tight and there was a strange something in his stomach that was both painful and pleasant, but very unfamiliar. He had to carefully school his features as to not give anything away, but inside of himself, a whirlwind was taking place, and for the first time in so many years, his heart was soaring.

* * * * *

Being mobbed was definitely not a happy feeling. Nagisa wasn’t sure how to deal with such a thing, considering it hadn’t happened to him before. Even in E Class, no one ever closed in on him in such a way. It was like he was being blocked on all sides; wherever he turned, there was a new person there to block his path. And even worse was that this is a school of heroes; before, he had blended well into the background because he was a misfit just as much as the rest of the class, but now he’s in a room chock full of potential heroes, and he doesn’t fit anywhere in that equation. He’s not a hero, he’s an _assassin_.

”You got first place? Wicked!” This is too ironic. Hell, there’s even another blonde guy that reminds Nagisa greatly of Maehara. Maehara was a good friend, but he was rather lacking a little in the brains department. Isogai practically had to lend him brain cells. Not to mention the blonde was kind of a womanizer, a little too casual about most things, and always tended to go with the flow.

He got the same vibe from this guy with the streak in his hair, right down to the brain cells having to be lent to him— this time it was a girl with tapered earlobes— and somehow he could already tell about his perverted tendencies. Guys like that always stand with their friends, facing the general direction of the closest pretty girl. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the little troglodyte.

”No way dude, that’s so manly!” Said a redhead with a wide smile. He reeked of testosterone, but other than that he seemed like an okay person. His wavelengths were bouncy and fast, so he must be one of those perpetually happy guys. Great.

(Also, he knew what a real redhead looks like, and this guy is most definitely dyed. Can’t fool him.)

“I wonder how he did it,” a girl named Tsuyu put a thoughtful finger to her lip (she too liked to be called by her first name), “since he didn’t use his quirk during the assessment.”

Whoop, here we go. A school of heroes, so of course they’d want to know about his quirk. Well, the reverence being directed towards him was fun while it lasted.

He noticed that Midoriya, who was right next to him, had suddenly pulled out a small notebook (Nagisa hadn’t left his side since the end of the test; the boy with the explosion quirk, Bakugo, had seemed _really_ pissed off). When he saw Nagisa staring at it, he quickly stuffed it back into his bag.

A weird warmth filled his chest when he realized he had something in common with someone in his class.

”Wh-What is your quirk anyway, Shiota-kun?”

”Nagisa.” He swiftly corrected.

“R-Right, Nagisa-kun! S-so, is your quirk non-physical? D-Does it only work when you’re f-fighting an enemy?”

Eh, what the hell.

”No.” Nagisa said, suppressing the urge to grin.

”So, why didn’t you use it?”

Nagisa kept his face in neutral. “Because I’m quirkless.”

He’ll admit that he said it just to see the looks on their faces, if only for a moment in time.

* * * * *

Uraraka had told Izuku how Nagisa had saved both him and herself during the test. Of course, he’d already seen him in action during the first part of the test. Just as he was about to be crushed by a giant robot, a blue blur streaked over him, and the robot was down before he could even blink. The tiny boy flashed Izuku a quick grin, then ran off before he could even get a better look at him, and he couldn’t help but stay and watch for a few brief seconds. Though he hadn’t been able to catch more than Nagisa running off to find another enemy, but he was mesmerized by how swift he was on his feet.

When the zero pointer came out, unlike Izuku who had pathetically frozen in fear, Nagisa didn’t even hesitate to save Uraraka, who had been trapped. But when he collapsed on the pavement, battered and exhausted, somehow the green haired boy knew that he needed his help. Even from a good several meters away, it was easy to tell that although the injuries themselves weren’t that bad, there was a myriad of them in various places, and the pain had slowly accumulated into something terrible.

His mind went back to all the times the boy had helped him, smiled at him, been so kind to him. The first friend, the _only_ friend he’s had in so many years. And he simply couldn’t leave him to his fate.

In a way, he had Nagisa to thank for helping him discover the power of One For All.

But right now, Nagisa’s face was flat and still. Not emotionless exactly, because those bright blue eyes were so full of life and mystery no matter what face he wore. Somehow though, it looked like he was very accustomed to keeping a poker face.

”So, why didn’t you use it?” Izuku asked, hoping he was prying. If Nagisa managed to earn himself the top spot in the hero exams, he must have a great quirk. It could be greater than Kacchan, even.

Nagisa merely frowned innocently at the question. “Because I’m quirkless.”

Some sort of explosion took place as all the air left his body. He could almost feel himself gawking at the boy, his head swirling with a strange mixture of disbelief, empathy, reverence, and the pain of bad memories. It was dizzying, and he thought his legs would give out any second.

Around him, everyone else has similar expressions of shock and sympathy. All eyes were on the quirkless boy, the quirkless boy that wasn’t Izuku for once, and he felt the irrational urge to step in and shield him from—

Oh no.

He spun around so fast that he nearly gave himself whiplash.

Sure enough, Kacchan’s eyes were blown wide with both shock and raw, seething rage. If the anger had been directed at Izuku, then he would have been running away screaming in sheer terror. Hell, just watching him be this pissed off at another person made him feel sick with dread. He’s seen his former childhood friend mad before, but this seemed to be on another level. Even when he’d been charged by the blonde earlier, he didn’t seem nearly this angry.

Knowing it was probably futile, Izuku tried to step in. “K-Kacchan, please—“

He didn’t get another word out. There was a fiery blur as some sort of bomb went off, smoke trailing in the air. In less than a second, Kacchan had Nagisa by the collar and was pinning him to the wall, absolutely frothing.

Everyone immediately tried to jump to the quirkless boy’s defense, but they were all cowed by the glare that was thrown their way. Uraraka looked both horrified and angry, the boy he thought was called Kaminari cowered behind his friend with the tapered earlobes, and the pink girl named Ashido was close to trying to break them apart, along with the spiky red headed boy next to her.

Nagisa, for the most part, looked bemused.

”Y-You... you little— goddamn, fuck—!” He was so mad, he couldn’t even speak. “How did _you_ get first place?! You fucking worthless piece of shit! You’re quirkless! You’re nothing! So how?! _Why the fuck did they let you come here?!_ I bet you cheated your way here, you little brat; there’s just no way—”

Izuku doesn’t know what came over him. It wasn’t every day those words weren’t directed at _him_. Quirkless people are so rare these days, after all. He was used to being called worthless. Useless. Pathetic. Loser. All of it. Up until recently, he thought that would be all he was, his whole life. And yet, he proved that he had what it took to All Might of all people. _All Might!_ He wasn’t worthless just because he lacked a quirk. He _could_ be a hero.

But hearing all that be directed to another person, someone that wasn’t him... it made him feel something he didn’t know he could feel at all.

He’s stood up to Kacchan for the sake of others before. He felt many things when he did. Fear, resolve, humiliation. He’d been forced to feel small, alone, scared, all those things. But this was the first time he felt this.

Pure, vindictive, primal rage.

”Get away from him, Katsuki.”

Kacchan turned his head at the unusual use of his first name. Once he saw it was just Izuku though, his scowl turned into a sneer of contempt.

”Tch. Makes sense you would defend him, Deku. Why don’t you punch me, huh? Punch me with the quirk you’ve been hiding from me, you fucking snake!”

”Enough, Bakugo-kun!” Iida had noticed the commotion and was now trying to break it up. “Such actions and words are unbecoming of a hero! I will alert a teacher if this continues!”

Eveb Kacchan wouldn’t risk getting thrown out of hero school on the first day, so he let go of Nagisa begrudgingly. The tiny boy merely smoothed out the wrinkles in his now crumpled uniform, still looking calmly puzzled.

Kacchan stuck a finger in Izuku ms face, his voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you dare get in my way, Deku. I’m gonna be the number one hero, no matter what stupid quirk you’ve been hiding.”

He rounded back on Nagisa, and everyone tensed, though the boy himself only seemed mildly surprised. He did flinch when Kacchan roughly grabbed his collar again, though it appeared to be out of reflex.

”That goes for you too, quirkless little pipsqueak! You can’t stand in the same league as me without a quirk. If you try, I’ll _kill_ you, got it?”

Izuku isn’t sure what happened, but at that moment, something happened. The atmosphere changed around the little bluenette.

”...Kill?” He muttered.

”What was that, runt?”

”Kill...”

”Speak up!”

Without warning, the temperature in the room seemed to drop by twenty degrees. Some people even looked over to see if Todoroki had done something, only to see that the half and half boy had already left the classroom.

What really sent a chill down everyone’s spine though was the small, airy laugh that sounded more sinister than it had any right to. Izuku shuddered, feeling like his heart was caught in his throat.

Nagisa looked Kacchan dead in the eye. Ruby orbs met cold sapphire, and for the first time ever, Izuku could swear he saw a hint of raw, naked terror in the eyes of his former friend.

When the smaller boy spoke, Izuku could _swear_ that he heard it overlap with a rattlesnake’s hiss.

_”I doubt you would have the stones to kill me, but I dare you to try.”_

_Everyone_ in the viscinity shivered in fear.

Kacchan dropped the boy’s collar like it was hot iron, taking a good three steps backwards.

And just like that, Nagisa was back to normal. His expression had been almost entirely unreadable before, and then it had morphed into one of sadistic iciness, but now there was a hint of dazed shock, and... maybe some regret?

The smaller boy muttered an apology and quickly exited the classroom, the door slamming abruptly behind him.

Izuku found himself following the boy without thinking. Uraraka said something that he didn’t hear very well, and he ran off in the direction he saw leave in (how is that kid so fast?). He made his way down the hall, descended the stairs, and passed the lockers before spotting the blue haired student walking towards the front gate, shoulders fallen.

”W-Wait, Sh— Nagisa-kun!” Nagisa abruptly stopped walking and turned to face Izuku— who was panting from having sprinted down the halls so fast— with a raised eyebrow.

Apparently, his state of exhaustion didn’t go unnoticed. ”Is something wrong?”

”I... sh-should be asking you that...” he wheezed in an out for a few seconds, trying to catch his breath, until he could finally talk normally again. The bearer of One For All straightened up. “What on earth happened back there? And are you okay? I know Kacchan can be a little—“

Nagisa interrupted him. “Kacchan?”

“Um... we used to be friends all the way back in kindergarten, but...”

”Let me guess. He drifted away?”

”Um, yeah—“

”Because of his quirk, right?”

Izuku sputtered, “H-How did you know?!”

Nagisa merely shook his head, a faint smile forming. “I guess that kind of thing happens a lot these days.”

Right. In all the ensuing chaos, he almost forgot about that tidbit. The quirkless thing.

”Can I walk with you?” He isn’t sure why he says it, but he doesn’t regret it. At least, he doesn’t feel as nervous as he normally would when trying to make a friend.

Is that what he’s doing? Making a friend?

It must be, because he’s rewarded with a nod of consent. “Sure. Um, I think my place is close to your place. I mean, I assume so, considering I kept seeing you at the beach.”

Oh, good, he doesn’t have to be the one to bring it up. Izuku was wondering if they were ever going to address the beach, mostly because he wasn’t sure it had even been real. It didn’t _feel_ real, or maybe that’s just because Nagisa hadn’t felt real at the time either. But seeing him here at school, it was such a sharp contrast to that first moment near the shore. Nagisa was more real than ever.

“Oh. Y-Yeah... I can walk you home?” He sucks at this.

For a moment, he swore that he could see a small hint of a frown on the small boy’s lips, but then the corners turned upwards. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother though.”

”You wouldn’t be! I go out on late night jogs all the time, so I know my way around the city pretty well.” Is he being too annoying? He doesn’t want to drive him away.

Nagisa sighs and laughs at the same time, like he did before. Izuku suspects he might be trying to figure out what to say to him.

”Really, I insist.” Please don’t reject his help, please don’t reject his help, please don’t reject his help...

Why is he being so insistent anyway? He never went out of his way to make any friends in middle school. For obvious reasons, of course, but still. Why is Nagisa so different?

Another airy chuckle. “You know, you don’t have to go out of your way to be my friend just because I’m quirkless.”

If Izuku was flustered before, he felt like dying in a hole now. Shame crept into his stomach. Was that what he’d been doing all this time? Of course it was. He’s spent so many years friendless and alone, he automatically assumed that the next quirkless person to come along would be the same way. But whose to say that Nagisa doesn’t have other friends outside of school?

He felt like such a hypocrite. Years of being treated like he was different, and all he ever wanted was for other people to accept him. Now here he is in front of Nagisa, acting like the guy couldn’t even go home by himself.

He hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. “I-I didn’t... I’m sorry...”

That sighing laugh again. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

Somehow that didn’t make him feel any better. But still... Nagisa had saved him during the exam. He’s more than just a helpless kid without a quirk. And Izuku wanted to know him beyond his status as powerless.

”Then... could you tell me about all those weapons you used during the exam? Or maybe show me some self defense moves?”

Upon hearing _that_ , the petite schoolboy lit up like a Christmas tree, his eyes sparkling with near manic joy.

* * * * *

The next day was hectic, to say the least.

Toshinori Yagi stood outside the door to the hero classroom, where his disciple and that other boy were. He didn’t know why, but he felt anxious.

It had to be because of Young Shiota. Not even two months ago, the boy was crumpled in a heap at his desk, coping with the aftermath of his and his peers’ captivity at the hands of the world’s second most dangerous villain. The same one that blew up the moon until it was only partially there anymore.

The moon had miraculously been replaced in the time that it had took to destroy it in the first place. No one was sure why, but Toshinori had a feeling that whoever was responsible wasn’t doing it for the sake of altruism. It made him feel on edge just thinking about it.

Regardless, he arrived on the scene as All Might to try and rescue the kids being held captive, only to find that they had taken care of the situation themselves. All of them seemed to be in a state of listlessness and grief, curled up at their seats with broken expressions.

The one who had dealt the final blow, one Nagisa Shiota, pointedly avoided looking the hero in the eye. His hands noticeably shook when approached. All Might attempted to provide some words of comfort, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears

_”I know what you had to do was rough. I can’t imagine, and I’m sorry I couldn’t arrive in time to save you from that. But you did a very brave thing, and now you can live in peace knowing that you’ll never see that monster again.”_

But he only seemed to make the whole thing even worse. It got to the point where one of Young Shiota’s friends had to walk up and tell All Might point blank that he wasn’t helping in the slightest.

The poor boy. Forced to take a life at such a young age. It had to be horrible. And the Number One Hero himself was incapable of protecting the young students, so much so that they had to do it themselves. He felt like such a failure, both as a hero, and as an adult.

And yet Shiota still insisted on becoming a hero. Despite what he’s gone through, despite his lack of a quirk.

He threw the door open.

”I AM HERE!” He yelled. “Entering the classroom like a hero!”

The teens all lit up with reverence and awe, their eyes sparkling. As All Might, Toshinori loved bringing kids joy when he showed up on the scene. He spotted his disciple, Young Midoriya, seated near a window, and he too had stars in his eyes. Even though he’s seen All Might every day for the past year.

But a small movement behind his little protege caught his attention.

He didn’t even realize there had been someone in that particular desk. There was a moment where the hero’s blue eyes locked with the students blue eyes. And then the boy turned away, averting his gaze and directing it towards the desk in front of him.

All Might felt his stomach clench with guilt.

Since that day, the students of that school have been hailed as heroes, but all Toshinori can think about, both in costume and out of it, is how much he failed each and every those children, and how he wishes he could apologize to the broken kid in front of him.

What would it take for this child to feel joy again?

* * * * *

Nagisa was buzzing with ecstasy.

Why? Because he shamelessly based his hero costume off of the gym uniform they’d been given midway through the year. Military style vest shirts and cargo pants, both a pale grayish blue and lined with fireproof _and_ bulletproof material. A pair of sturdy army boots with thick soles. A thin, long sleeve black unitard underneath, and a wide hood.

He’s sure that it looked a little suspicious that he already preplanned his costume, but he didn’t care. All he really did was send in the uniform and ask for a few upgrades to be done.

Like his boots. They were already pretty clunky, but he requested that some iron be added into the toes. Also, he figured that he was going to need something to account for any change in terrain, so aside from making the soles even thicker and changing them from leather to rubber, now when he double taps his heel into the ground, several tiny spikes shoot out at the bottom. Now he essentially has a pair of cleats.

Also, his belt. Before it was just a belt, but now it’s got loads of utilities, and can store many different weapons. He has a compartment for his pistols (which contained tranquilizer darts and plasma bullets, because he’s not stupid), his knives (took way too much paperwork to convince the school to include those in his equipment), his tasers (low voltage, of course), and a couple of smoke bombs and flash bombs (he doesn’t think it’s fair that he doesn’t get to have real grenades, considering Bakugo literally has an explosion quirk, but he said nothing about it). Also, a length of rope and a grappling hook were secured under his jacket, completely out of sight. He’d never been so thankful that Cyberpunk Industries went out of their way to make their equipment as light as possible, otherwise he’d have trouble just moving.

As he peeled off his school uniform in the locker room, he felt a couple of the guys eying him strangely. He didn’t get it at first, thinking maybe they were just interested in his costume. However, the boy he had come to know as Eijiro Kirishima abruptly tapped him on the shoulder, which startled him so bad that he physically had to restrain himself from accidentally walloping him in the head or something.

“What is it?” He tried to keep his tone as friendly as possible, despite that brief moment of total panic.

Kirishima was the kind of person who smiles all the time (Nagisa can’t help but dislike people who do that), so it was a bit jarring to see the redhead with such a concerned frown on his face. ”Um... are you okay dude?” The ~~much~~ taller boy asked.

Nagisa didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t he be okay? Is it because of his lack of a quirk? No, it’s not fair to assume that everything he doesn’t like is because of his quirklessness.

The guy waited for an answer, and there was a distinct moment in which they both seemed to realize that everyone else was listening in on the conversation. They both shifted uncomfortably, the shorter boy awkwardly rubbing his bare arms.

“Excuse me?” He asked when he finally gave up trying to figure out what was so concerning.

“It’s just...” Kirishima stumbled over his own words. “You have, like, a lot of scars you know.”

...Oh. Right.

Nagisa pulls up his best smiling face, the one that was full of reassurance and fake promises that everything was okay. “...It’s from when I was a kid. I fell off my bike down a ravine. Kinda had to go to the hospital, but I’m perfectly fine now.”

Despite being an assassin, he’s never been one of those people who can come up with a good lie on the spot. Generally speaking, he tries to use half truths and misdirection, so that he’s not technically lying. But even so, he’s practiced this particular lie so many times that it comes far more naturally to him than any other fib he’s told. He’s still not sure exactly how believable it is— some of the scars are still in various stages of healing— but no one’s ever questioned it before.

This seems to be a good enough answer for Kirishima, and by extension, the rest of the class. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Midoriya changing in the corner, looking rather subdued. Nagisa made his way over to the green boy, but said nothing as they both finished putting their costumes on.

A couple of times, he felt someone watching him, and he would look over his shoulder to see a pair of heterochromatic eyes quickly shift away as their owner pretended that he wasn’t staring.

He needs to focus. Combat simulations. This will be a good way to examine how the hero course best trains its students for real life scenarios. Furthermore, he’ll get to see how the students effectively use their quirks in a less restrained setting.

Yesterday he’d taken the liberty of watching the other students as closely as possible, to try and memorize their quirks and overall physical stats. He’d memorized the rankings of the physical and scribbled them down in his notes, and then tried to associate their names with their powers, but he felt as though it wasn’t enough. He needed to know how these people would utilize them in a situation where every little thing counted towards the bigger picture.

He also may or may not have hacked into the UA files to get everyone’s results on the entrance exam. Just to see who was the bigger threat, and who held the most potential. So far, he’s concluded that Bakugo had a lot of untapped potential in terms of power, but the least of it in terms of heroism. As for Midoriya, he obviously held the most potential in both power and heroism. Looks like Nagisa knows who to look into.

...It felt dirty, he’ll admit. It _was_ dirty. But he has a mission. He can’t let his coworkers down. He can’t afford to be hindered by scruples and personal attachment.

This isn’t E-Class.

When they made their way to Ground Beta, a couple of people quietly marveled at his equipment. Cyberpunk Industries was known for their quality over quantity. Resources and production was hard to (legally) fund, and too _much_ funding can and often does result in suspicion. He was sure he was being silently judged too, and that was confirmed when he pretended to be concentrating on loading his guns while he eavesdropped on the people around him.

”Where do you think he got all that?”

”Probably some fancy shmancy support company.”

”So he really is quirkless?”

”Is it really okay for him to participate?”

“Quirkless or not, I’m not gonna hold back.”

He could feel Bakugo glaring at his back, but made no attempt to call him out on it as he made his way over to Midoriya, who was talking to the cute brown haired girl named Uraraka that he saved from the zero-pointer.

Although her sheer optimism and lack of respect for others’ personal space made him someone wary of her, a small part of him couldn’t help but he reminded of Kayano, with her upbeat personality and go-getting attitude, her cutesy mannerisms and cheerful demeanor. It wasn’t surprising that she was gluing herself to Midoriya.

Midoriya’s hero outfit was a bright, mint green jumpsuit with a hood that covered most of his face and greatly resembled a rabbit with the ears. He still wore his bright red sneakers, and Nagisa couldn’t help but wonder why he’d chosen such weak material for the cloth. There was also a mouthpiece hanging around his neck that looked suspiciously like a wide smile.

Awesome. Another All Might enthusiast.

Uraraka seemed to have gone for a more stylish approach. A skintight bodysuit, black and cotton candy pink, with high heeled boots that looked like they were made of pure styrofoam. She also had a white helmet with a pink visor, making her look like a sort of astronaut in training. He supposed that was fitting for a girl with her quirk.

She brightened up when she saw Nagisa approach, her already round eyes growing wider.

“Wow, you’re hero costume is so cool!” She yipped. “You look so military.”

He laughed. That was the idea, after all.

Suddenly a greenish blur flashed in front of him, and he found himself staring into a pair of emerald eyes, which were ablaze with curiosity. Midoriya was looking him over head to toe, focusing primarily on his weapons and tools.

”Amazing... the material is nothing like I’ve ever seen!” He was talking a little under his breath, so it was hard to hear him. “Fireproof, waterproof, insulated... and those knives, they could probably cut through metal. Everything is meant to support a stealth based fighting style, the illusory bombs, the practicality of the—“

“Midoriya?”

”Yes?”

”Personal space?”

Sure enough, the hero geek turned a shade of red brighter than Karma’s hair and promptly backed up. Nagisa laughed again, his shoulders loosening a little as the tension faded.

Uraraka was the most talkative of them, as was expected. “But isn’t Deku’s costume super cute?”

Nagisa frowned. “Deku?”

”Oh, just a nickname. Doesn’t it give you ‘you can do it’ vibes?”

Not really. Considering the only other person to call him that had been Bakugo, who was about as friendly as a rabid dog, he wasn’t sure that such a name was a compliment. Maybe it’s just him though. Back in middle school, the students and even teachers would use derogatory terms to refer to him and his lack of a quirk; he was fairly certain that they invented multiple slurs that didn’t exist before. Aside from things like ‘crip’ and ‘special’, they also coined the term ‘baby fawn’, which sounded cute, but was really a way to refer to someone that’s completely helpless, like a newborn deer that couldn’t stand properly. Even the word quirkless itself was used as a slur, usually against people who had useless or boring quirks.

He didn’t say any of this out loud though. He merely shrugged. “I guess so.”

Just then, he heard someone creep up behind him, and quickly spun around to face them.

He was met with someone dressed head to toe in a suit of armor, looking like a cross between a white knight and a Transformer. He gaped for a few seconds, trying to discern who would choose that for their outfit and _why_ , before a rigid voice rang out from inside the helmet.

”Excuse me, Shiota-kun.”

”Iida, please, could you call me by my given name?”

”...alright, Nagisa-kun. Forgive me, but I’ve been informed that you happen to be quirkless?”

And, here we go again. Trying not to let his frustration show, he nodded slowly.

”Are you sure you are a good fit for the hero course? Forgive me for being so blunt, but I just want to be sure—“

”How is it any of your business?”

The words tumbled out of his mouth way before he had the sense to stop them. He instantly wished he could take it back, wished he could erase it from existence, but the damage was done. _Dammit_.

Although he couldn’t see Iida, Nagisa felt the armored man’s wavelengths spike with surprise and wounded pride.

”Now, how could you be like that? The hero course is dangerous in nature, and I merely want to make sure everyone here is taking it seriously.”

”D-Don’t say that!”

Both boys turned around in confusion. Midoriya was standing closer to them, his shoulders hunched with anxiety, but his face set in stone under the mask. He looked close to throwing up, and yet determined all the same.

“Don’t say that about Nagisa-kun! He’s just as strong as the rest of us. P-Probably even more so! He got first on the practical, remember?”

Nagisa resolved to buy this kid all the All Might merch he could afford once school was out.

Nagisa was excited for this exercise. Why? Because he and his classmates used to play a very similar game for assassination training last year, where a team would take over a base and the opposing team would have to sneak in and complete any given objective. The main difference is that Korosensei would fly them to an actual military base (it was rather awkward for Karasuma) and there’s multiple factors that one would have to think of in such a game. He and Karma were always put on opposing teams because, to quote Maehara, “it’s not fair for the other team if you two are put together”. It was one of the few gym exercises that Nagisa always beat Karma in, solely because his team usually let him go off on his own and do his own thing. Once, he even managed to score his side a perfect win through careful planning and misdirection. Good times.

All Might explained the rules. A fifteen minute time limit for the heroes would be set, and the villains would get a bomb to defend. If the heroes capture all the villains or get to the bomb, they win. If they fail to reach it within the time limit, or if the villains capture the heroes, then villains win.

Nagisa was fairly certain that he’d only need six or seven minutes to capture the opposing team or make it to the bomb, but only if he were able to go off on his own. But with a partner in tow, he’ll have to make use of the other persons skills instead of relying on himself.

One by one, everyone broke out into intensive questioning.

”Sir, will you be the one judging us?” Asked a tall girl in a skimpy red outfit.

”How much can we hurt the other team?” Bakugo demanded, eying both Izuku and Nagisa.

”Do we have to worry about one of us being sent home like earlier?” Uraraka piped up nervously.

”Will you be pairing us based on chance or comparative skill?” Iida inquired with his hand raised.

”Isn’t this cape _tre magnefique_?” Nagisa bit his lip to keep from laughing.

He had to bite it even harder when the Number One Hero of Japan ended up pulling out notecards. Seriously, even Korosensei—

He shook his head when the thought brought a heaviness in his chest. No teacher will ever be like Korosensei.

He could barely stand to look at All Might solely for the reason that he reminded him so much of that yellow octopus. With his height and that perpetual smile, the resemblance was enough to cause a pang in his stomach.

He ended up paired with the tall dark haired girl from earlier. She seemed like the straight laced type, similar to Iida, but with an air of naïveté that told him she was inexperienced, if intelligent.

Weirdly enough, she stared at him with a rather intense expression, like she was holding something back. He smiled at her, but made a point to keep his distance. Partly because standing too close to her meant having to crane his neck in order to look her in the eye (and he was determined to look her in the eye, no matter how much trouble he had with eye contact or how risqué her outfit was).

Her quirk was the best thing he could ever ask for by far. As long as he had her on his side, they were sure to win. He already knew how.

* * * * *

Momo was having a hard time focusing on the task at hand.

She normally had laser focus and a razor sharp mind— her grades and status as a recommendation student reflected that. Granted, her parents had connections, but she still passed the special exam with ease. Regardless, she liked to think that her intellect would be her greatest asset in the hero course, since her quirk relied on her knowledge of complex molecular structures.

But right now, there was just no way for her to focus.

Why? Because of Nagisa Shiota.

He had already requested to be called by his given name, and she obliged. She couldn’t help it, just like she couldn’t help her lack of concentration.

Because he was just too _gosh darn cute_.

And it was taking a lot of self restraint in order to act normal around him. He’s just so tiny, and his smile is a burst of golden sunlight. Those pretty blue eyes remind her of a kitten she found on the street when she was little, but wasn’t allowed to take home because her parents had deemed it “filthy”. His small, lithe frame further emphasized the resemblance, and when he shyly asked if he could call her Momo, with his adorable face dusted in light pink, she had to fold her arms behind her back in order to keep from petting him on the head like a puppy.

“So I have a plan, Momo. Do you want to hear it?”

Oh right, they’re in the middle of their training exercise. She scolded herself for getting distracted at such a time and attempted to continue prepping the bomb.

”R-Right, Nagisa-kun. What’s the plan?”

He smirked, a mischievous glint in his eye. On anyone else it would have looked impish, but on him, it served to make him look even more kitten-like.

”Could you make me a five pound bag of salt, a pair of ice skates, and a small to medium sized flamethrower?”

And just like that, Momo immediately began to fear how this would go down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally going to be much longer, but I ended up splitting it into two parts. Stay tuned!
> 
> Next up: Todoroki and Shoji vs. Momo and Nagisa.


	5. Fight Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Go and make them proud, do what's necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go y’all.

Since Toshinori was taking the kids for a round of training, Shouta decided to answer a few of his own questions.

While he didn’t entirely trust this man to be left alone with students, it’s not as though the underground hero had a choice in the matter. At the very least, he can take his own mind off of worrying whether or not the big oaf even knew how to work a projector by doing some definitely-not-illegal investigating on one of his students.

Nagisa Shiota is a huge bag of mysteries, wrapped in an enigma and tied up in a ribbon of secrecy. The kid has skills that the teacher has never even seen before, along with some others that he’s only ever seen in the most _advanced_ of the underground agency. And if that wasn’t bad enough, being quirkless on top of it meant something else. After all, most quirkless kids are treated worse than garbage, and most heroes are all about marketing. If a quirkless kid is trying to be a hero, there must be some motive.

_”Hey, kid.” Shouta latched on to the tiny boy’s shoulder as he tried to walk out of the classroom._

_The student flinched so violently that Shouta took a step back out of surprise, unsure of what he did. He looks even smaller than before, his body curled in on itself as though bracing for a hit, arms drawn up to his chest. However, a few seconds pass and nothing happens, so Nagisa slowly relaxes, the tension in his shoulders almost visibly releasing._

_”What is it, sir?” He said meekly, trying to pretend as though nothing happened._

_Shouta decided not to press it for now, but resolved to look into it later. “You do realize that you can’t bend the rules like that all the time, right? This is a hero course, not a game. You need to take things seriously.”_

_”Sir, I_ am _taking things seriously.” The boy shifted uncomfortably, looking down at his feet with a resigned look on his face._

_”Listen, about the physical exam—”_

_”You said, ‘anything goes’, and then said, ‘you may use your quirks’. What you should have said was ‘anything goes as long as you use your quirks’. Only then would I have done anything wrong.”_

_This brat..._

Far from being his usual batch of unruly students, this one was a total oddity. He knows exactly what rules he can bend, and just how much he can bend them before they break. He’s always looking at things from a different angle than most others, and his sheer skill and technique is probably the best in the class— maybe even more so than the recommended students. He’s intelligent, not extremely so, but he did get fifteenth overall in the written exam.

But some things about him just don’t line up. His jumpiness, for one thing, as well as his timid and shy personality. A kid like him should be either a social gem like the Yaoyorozu girl, or withdrawn and high-and-mighty like Endeavor’s kid. But instead, he’s naturally kind towards others, but still has walls around him, as though he’s afraid of something. His whole existence is an oxymoron.

So here he was, sat in the teacher’s lounge and cyberstalking a teenage boy like a creep. He’s aware of how suspect he is, but a teacher’s got to do what a teacher’s got to do.

It turns out that tracking Nagisa down online is way harder than it looks. The kid is nearly nonexistent on social media, and any friends he has go out of their way to not mention him unless it’s in a group thing. He managed to locate a photo of him sat in what looked like an elementary school classroom, tutoring a little rose-haired girl while the taker of the photo put heart emoji stickers all over it. Unfortunately, that didn’t really help him at all, since the caption only mentioned his given name and nothing more.

So, looks like he’s going to have to go even deeper.

He’ll need to look at the boy’s personal files. Technically all teachers should have access to it, but it might look rather... invasive if he’s suddenly looking into a student’s past, so he’ll have to make sure he comes up with a good excuse, just in case anyone catches him.

Whoever this kid is, Shouta has a feeling that something’s gotta give soon.

* * * * *

Shoto looked over at his partner for the exercise. Shoji had created a plethora of small ears on the tips of his fingers and elbows, and they were swiveling back and forth like a sonar. They were still standing outside the building, but Shoto didn’t mind. This round will be over soon, he’s sure of it.

He met the Momo Yaoyorozu girl at the recommendation exam (his shitty old man insisted on it; apparently her family is well respected among the hero agency) and got a good grasp of her quirk and personality. Overall, she’s clever, very clever, but lacks the ability to stay calm in a tense situation. Instead she panics, and then makes decisions before thinking about them. Still, if she were up against anyone else, she’d most definitely have a good chance, but unfortunately she’s not.

As for the quirkless kid... Well, need he say more? The boy is weak. His scores in the physical should have been higher, but instead he has the average strength of a girl his age. But more than that, his lack of a quirk is nothing more than a liability. He’s got good technique and has a good grasp of basic weaponry, but that can only get you so far when facing against someone far more powerful. Shoto would crush him in an instant.

“Stand outside for a little bit.” He told his partner. “This’ll be over soon.”

He summoned his trusty ice power, and all at once his blood ran cold throughout his body. The familiar surge of adrenaline mixed in with the frigidness in his veins and he felt the temperature around him drop as he entered the building. When he took a step on the hard concrete, frost blossomed from his right foot and began to _spread_ , and it kept spreading and spreading.

The walls began to look like glass. Shoto sucked in a breath, but winced when the frozen air stung his lungs. It sucks that he’s not immune to his own cold, but at least the sudden attack likely left both of his opponents frozen to the ground by their feet. Even if they manage to escape by removing their shoes, there’s no way they can fight barefoot on ice.

He’s already won.

He smirked and puffed out the air in his body, which created a cloud of mist in front of his mouth. Ice, he mused, is such a fickle element. It’s just subzero water, but it has so much effect in so many different scenarios. It can change the flow of any fight no matter how it’s used. Mess up the terrain for your enemy, injure them by freezing their limbs, or even just distract them with the irritating change in weather. And yet, it’s less fickle than his accursed fire. When in the hands of man, it can create, but when left to the throws of nature, it’s only capability is destruction. Given the choice, he’ll take ice. In his hands, ice is the most powerful force on earth.

_Crunch_.

Shoto halted mid-step.

That was a footstep, and it definitely was not his own. It came from behind him. He turned around, wondering if Shoji had followed him into the building, and yet he saw nothing. No Shoji, no anyone.

His blood ran cold again, but this time it had nothing to do with his quirk.

_Ting_.

He looked down, and realized that he had stepped on a wire, which had snapped in half. Panic rose in his chest as he threw himself forward, and was promptly blasted off his feet.

The world tipped for a dizzying moment, his entire being in a state of paralysis as he was helpless to stop himself from tumbling on the slippery ground. He grunted as something hot tickled the back of his neck, most likely heat from the blast.

He couldn’t see well at all, yet out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the wall he was about to slam into— which was lined with a wooden panel that had spikes and nails potruding out of it, ready for him to impale himself. His heart dropped to his knees and he instinctively raised his arm and created a glacier to halt his tumbling. Shoto slammed into the pillar of ice, his frostbitten shoulder stinging painfully.

When the ringing in his ears stopped and his blurry vision cleared, he looked at the entrance and realized that the explosion had caused some thick sheets of ice to fall off the ceiling in front of the door and collapse, blocking his escape route as well as sealing him away from Shoji. And those ice sheets _were_ thick, so it’d be a nightmare trying to get past them.

Shoto scoffed. Oh, those two are _good_.

The crunching noise from earlier was most definitely a footstep. Right next to the blocked off entrance, the door to a random room was ajar. He creeped closer to the room, but kept his right arm at the ready. This is likely a trap, that much he could tell, but if he could set off any rig they may have set up, but from far away, the person waiting for him will be frozen to the walls in less than a second.

Then he’ll force them to take him to the bomb.

A rattling sound made him jump and spin around. Something small and cylinder shaped skittered across the ground.

He growled and kicked it as hard as he could, then created a wall of ice between himself and the object, wondering where the hell it came from. No one was behind him when he stopped himself from being skewered on the wooden panel.

It occurred to him too late that he just blocked himself off from advancing to any higher floors.

Dammit. It’s only been about three or so minutes and he already got outsmarted. But his opponents didn’t know his quirk. Yaoyorozu had seen his ice ability in action during the recommended exam, but she didn’t know about his left side. He vowed never to use this side in battle, but as long as he’s not actually directly fighting anyone, it shouldn’t matter. They likely thought his ice would only melt naturally, so they’d never see this part coming. Once he finds those two, he’ll freeze them solid for this.

But when he reached out to touch the wall of ice, he heard another crunch.

Shoto turned around just in time to see a small brown sack of _something_ flying towards him.

He didn’t even get to react properly before the bag burst. Even as he tried to throw up another ice wall, it did him no good as his vision was filled with white smoke. He felt himself being pelted by what felt like sand, for it was just as grainy and heavy. His eyes stung as the white cloud obstructed his view, but he only made it worse when he tried to rub them.

Another rounded object flew into the air; this time, he was ready. He created a spike of ice that knocked the ball to the ground, and it burst a couple of meters away from him. The result was a small explosion of smoke that was a much darker color than the white powder coating his body. The sickly gray fumes billowed down the hall he was trapped in, seeping into the mysterious room, but nothing happened for a long while.

Just as he was about to turn around and try melting the ice wall, there was a shift in the dark cloud as something began to move around.

_CLICK._

The world fell into fire.

* * * * *  
  


**A few minutes earlier.**

Nagisa fiddled around with the final trap, adjusting the angle so that it was less noticeable from a normal view. The string was meant to be stepped on, but if he hopped right over it, there’s a small chance that he’ll instead step on the small pressure plate. Either way, this trap is essential to the plan, so if it fails, Yaoyorozu will have to deal with Shoji on her own. Not that he doubted her, but she might be overwhelmed if it doesn’t go according to plan, especially with how weirdly distracted she was earlier.

”Where did you learn how to do this?” Yaoyorozu asked him nervously.

He grinned at her reassuringly. “I saw it in a movie once.”

Technically not a lie. He saw it in a movie once, and then asked Korosensei to teach him how to set it up. Of course, the big yellow octopus monster was ecstatic to teach his most enthusiastic student how to make a death trap.

...What _is_ his life?

”Are you sure this’ll work?” His partner asked, biting her lip anxiously.

He gave her another smile. “Don’t worry Momo-chan, I’ve got this.”

And just like that, she relaxes. He cheers internally. Girls like Yaoyorozu don’t have a lot of friends, something he can relate to, though in her case it’s likely because of her sheltered upbringing. He distinctly remembers reading about a group of heroes that came from the exact same bloodline, so he wouldn’t be surprised if she grew up in one of those rich family houses. Addressing her with familiarity, calling her by her first name and all, and she’ll trust him in no time. Maybe he’ll give her a cutesy nickname to speed up the process? No, that’s too forward. In any case, being her friend might help him find more about the Yaoyorozu’s.

God, who is he becoming? He’s making friends for the sake of using them. Maybe after all this, he’ll meet up with his actual friends from his old class. Karma _has_ been talking about that new sushi place.

Focus right now though. He turns to his partner and tells her about the plan.

”The idea is to force him to corral himself in,” he explains, “by taking advantage of his reflex time and natural reactions. The first set of traps will be on the ground, so he’ll be unconsciously watching his step, whether he realizes it or not. That means he won’t notice when the final trap goes off— or if he does, he’ll notice too late.”

”What if he sees it coming?” She points out.

”That’s where you come in. The ice skates will let you move fast so that you can set off the remaining traps without him catching you.”

”And the salt?”

”Rock salt contains a solute that melts ice like a blowtorch.”

Since the costuming agency has yet to provide him with chemical bombs, he’s having Yaoyorozu help him. It’s a little something he picked up from Okuda. Admittedly science was never his favorite subject— that’s not to say he was bad at it, he just found it boring. Okuda, on the other hand, taught him all an assassin would need to know about chemistry and physics. Turns out there’s a way to move silently on ice: you just slide across. Go with the flow, so to speak. Regardless, a bleach bomb or two should be a good backup plan if he gets cornered.

He wrapped up the little brown sack that was stuffed with ingredients. A plastic bag with a mild explosive, surrounded by the pound or so of ground salt that they didn’t use to cover the floor around the weapon. The result was a “salt bomb”, which functioned virtually the same as a sugar bomb. The powder would provide a smokescreen, and the salt would negate his quirk.

Of course, a good assassin always has a backup plan. He adjusts his jacket.

He’ll show Todoroki what an experienced killer is capable of.

* * * * *  
  


The icy hero boy was quickly drowned in a sea of fire as the flamethrower blasted him with heat. He threw up some ice walls to protect himself, but because of the stupid salty stuff, they weren’t as thick as he’d have liked.

Everything hurt. He cried out when a burst of pain pounded into him, the burns spreading throughout his body. Everything stung like crazy, even as he jumped out of the line of fire and fell into a melted puddle. The cold water soothed the burning, but it still felt like agony as his skin started to blister and turn red.

He groaned and tried to stand up, but his energy was shot. The injuries were too much, loathe was he to admit it. He tried once, then twice, then a third time, but each attempt ended in failure as he slipped on the watery floor and fell back down.

He heard footsteps. When he opened his eyes, someone was standing over him.

Despite the burns, his insides froze.

Those _eyes_. They were nothing like he had ever seen before. Cold and blue, hypnotic like a snake’s, darker and lonelier than the deepest ocean, yet also brighter than the most dazzling stars. They were alight, not with malice or triumph, not with hatred or sorrow, but with a combination of two unexpected things.

The first was a sort of innocent, childlike excitement, like a little kid riding a thrilling roller coaster. Sparks of pure joy lit up Shiota’s wide, wide eyes, the sheer adrenaline flushing his cheeks.

And the second? He couldn’t even tell. It might have been something that Shoto was too inexperienced to fully understand.

But...

He was wide open.

Without thinking, Shoto’s right foot shot out. In seconds, the smaller boy’s boots were encased in ice, and Shiota was stuck to the ground, unable to so much as take a single step forward.

Surprisingly, the boy didn’t even blink.

Shoto was no idiot. He knew the kid had a method to escape the frozen prison, whatever that method might be. The smaller of the two was staring at his own trapped feet with a sort of curiosity, like he was more interested in the ice itself than he was in actually freeing himself from it. He must have some sort of plan, maybe to be enacted when Shoto leaves him be. Where’s Yaoyorozu?

He pulls out his roll of capture tape and walks over to the ‘villain’. Shiota is tiny, so Shoto has to look down in order to properly speak to him.

”I underestimated you.” He admitted. “I had no idea you would have so much up your sleeve.” His face was stone as he grabbed Shiota’s wrist. “But in the end, it was over the second you let your guard down. A quirkless person can’t afford to be careless, even for one second. It’s a shame, really. You put so much effort into getting here, but it’s useless in the end.”

” _Useless_.”

Shoto nearly jumped as the blue haired boy’s free hand latched onto the taller one’s shoulder. He kept his expression neutral though, staring into those strange, vivid blue eyes.

The smaller boy spoke, but his voice was calm and serene. “Todoroki. I always knew that I could never beat you in a fair fight. And you know it too.”

Of course Shoto knew that. It’s only common sense. No quirkless person is stupid enough to fight head to head with someone of his caliber and skill. Even if the sheer power didn’t overwhelm them, the combination of strength and strategy would end the fight in seconds.

”Which is why...”

Shiota’s wrist was pried from his grasp, and he felt a hand snap onto his forearm.

“...it’s too bad for you.”

A warm smile spread across his face.

**“I don’t fight _fair_.”**

He unzipped his jacket, revealing a short necklace with a bomb hanging from it.

There was a small click, and the world fell away into an explosion of light.

* * * * *  
  


“What just happened?!” Uraraka shouted, panic written all over her features.

Izuku’s stomach clenched in fear. The cameras were nothing but static, and his friend was still trapped by Todoroki. He saw the half and half boy in the quirk assessment test, and he was a natural at using his power. He almost thought that Nagisa didn’t stand a chance, but then he reminded himself not to count out the quirkless boy.

When the ice fell over the tiny boy’s feet, Izuku couldn’t help but sag his shoulders in disappointment. He’d really been rooting for Nagisa, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that he had a way out of the situation.

Until he noticed Yaoyorozu peeking out from behind a corner, watching the exchange go down. She didn’t look like she was watching, but rather, like she was waiting for something specific to happen. The look on her face, however, was a mixture of guilt, fear, and internal turmoil, and her hands shook as she dug something out of her pocket.

And then after that, the cameras went to static as some sort of blast of light went off.

Now they were all staring at empty screens and listening to white noise. All Might, who had been monitoring the situation closely but hadn’t said anything at all in the past six minutes, jumped out of his seat and started frantically yelling into the mic.

”Young Shiota! Young Todoroki! Do either of you copy? Young Yaoyorozu?”

Kaminari, who was standing in a corner with Jirou, looked over to her anxiously.

”What do you think happened?”

”How should I know?” She griped. “It looks like a bomb went off, but we can’t even see what the he’ll is going on right now.”

Kirishima gritted his teeth. “I didn’t like how unmanly all those cheap tricks were, but I don’t want Nagisa-kun to be hurt.”

Izuku was beside himself with worry, though he tried to keep himself tempered as he stared desperately at the screen. He pleaded that whatever had happened, his friend was okay, and that Todoroki and Yaoyorozu were alright too. He can’t lose the first real friend he ever made! Not when he was finally starting to have something in common with someone else.

Kacchan merely glared at the ground.

Just then, as the tension in the room grew like a fungus, the screen started to come back. It flickered a few times, and everyone waited with baited breath.

All Might spoke into the mic. “Are the three of you alright in there?”

The screen came back.

The students and teacher all saw that Nagisa and Todoroki were lying in a heap together on the ground, neither of them moving. They both seemed at least semi unconscious, but stirred when they heard All Might’s voice in their ears.

Yaoyorozu was standing a few paces away from them, looking pale and shaky as she slowly creeped towards her exercise partner.

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she quickly created a roll of capture tape with her quirk, and then grabbed Todoroki’s wrist and tied him up.

No one could believe what just happened.

“The villain team... wins!”

* * * * *  
  


Shota felt the universe implode on him. He couldn’t believe what he had just discovered.

He quickly pulled out his phone and went to the contact that said “Smiley-faced Idiot”. Also known as one Toshinori Yagi, who happened to be the Number One Hero of Japan.

He tried not to let his fingers shake as they flew across the keyboard.

  
**Aizawa** : When you get the chance, tell Nagisa Shiota to meet with me in the principal’s office to talk.

He thought about it for a long minute afterwards, but before he could type anything else, a message popped up.

**Smiley-faced Idiot** : What’s this about, Aizawa?

Shota quickly typed in his answer.

**Aizawa** : He’s one of the Twenty Eight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. I figured I’d make a little callback to the first episode of Assassination Classroom. Nagisa is kind of insane.
> 
> If anyone is interested, I’m trying to start up a new discord server. I’ll post the link next chapter.
> 
> Btw sorry if this chapter was of low quality or too short. Stay tuned!

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone is curious, I’ve made out some quirks for the members of Class 3-E:
> 
> Nagisa Shiota: Quirkless.  
> Karma Akabane: Alpha Wolf (see above).  
> Kaede Kayano: Telepathy. She can read the minds of people she’s making eye contact with.  
> Tomohito Sugino: Trigonometry. Can physically see and effortlessly calculate angles in his head. Ironically, he’s bad at other aspects of math.  
> Manami Okuda: Lethal Dosage. Her blood and saliva are poisonous.  
> Sousuke Sugaya: Ink. Has a series of tattoos on his arms, and he can use the ink to fight in battle.  
> Yukiko Kanzaki: Glamour. Can change a person’s appearance in small ways, and usually they have no time limit.  
> Meg Kataoka: Thunderclap. By clapping her hands, she can send powerful waves of sound through the air.  
> Touka Yada: Night Vision. Can see up to everything in the dark. Usually has to wear sunglasses during the day.  
> Hinano Kurahashi: Anthokinesis. The manipulation of flowers.  
> Rinka Hayami: Cooldown. Can nullify her own emotions as well as someone else’s.  
> Ryuunosuke Chiba: Bullet Time. Can process time faster than the average human.  
> Hinata Okano: Contortionist. Is double jointed everywhere and inhumanly flexible.  
> Yuuma Isogai: Foresight. Can see one second into the future.  
> Ryouma Terasaka: Toughness. Has skin thicker than a rhino’s. Physically, anyway.  
> Takuya Muramatsu: Pheremones. Can give off any type of smell, whether it be food related, floral, or even trigger odor memory.  
> Taisei Yoshida: Hotwire. Has telepathic connections with vehicles.  
> Kirara Hazama: Nightmare Fuel. Can make a person experience a fear inducing hallucination through physical contact.  
> Koutarou Takebayashi: Photographic Memory. Self explanatory.  
> Sumire Hara: Metabolism. Her metabolism is tied to her physical strength.  
> Rio Nakamura: Linguistics. Can speak every known language.  
> Kouki Mimura: Thoughtography. Can transfer images onto photographs, and memories onto video tapes.  
> Taiga Okajima: X-Ray Vision. Can see through walls and other materials. This doesn’t work on people or clothing, much to his disappointment.  
> Justice Kimura: Super Speed. Enhanced running speed.  
> Yuzuki Fuwa: Speed Reading. Can read up to ten thousand words in less than ten seconds.  
> Itona Horibe: Hacker. Control over tech and computers.  
> Ritsu: AI. She is the world’s first AI. There is talk of her one day receiving an android body.  
> Tadaomi Karasuma/“Black-Ops” : Superhuman. He has enhanced strength and reflexes.  
> Irina Jelavic/“Vixen”: Infatuate. With a kiss on the cheek, she can force someone to tell her the truth. A kiss on the lips, she can give them an order to follow through with.


End file.
